Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell

Joel Mayward (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

160 Seiten

2025
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
979-8-7651-3276-0 (ISBN)

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Explores the two opposing groups that found themselves as strange bedfellows upon the release of Sufjan Stevens’ seventh studio album, Carrie & Lowell,: the LGBTQIA+ community and American evangelical Christians, united in praise for Stevens’ beautifully melancholic music.

Upon the release of Sufjan Stevens’ seventh studio album, Carrie & Lowell, two divergent groups found themselves as strange bedfellows: the LGBTQIA+ community and American evangelical Christians. Both were united in praise for Stevens’ beautifully melancholic music.

Critically acclaimed as one of the best albums of 2015, the elegiac and intimate record about the death of Sufjan’s estranged mother reflects the musician’s own paradoxical posture—Carrie & Lowell is both sacred and profane, Christian and queer, traditional and progressive, despairing and hopeful.

Theologian and cultural critic Joel Mayward considers Carrie & Lowell as a mystical metamodern memento mori, Sufjan’s symphonic (as opposed to systematic) approach to the questions of mortality, sexuality, and God. Fusing critical observations with personal narrative, Mayward examines the unique audience reception of Carrie & Lowell and the questions it raises: in a world of division, how might Stevens’ affecting music act as a bridge of love between seemingly irreconcilable communities? As Carrie & Lowell reminds us of the painful truth that “we’re all gonna die,” perhaps it also offers a glimpse of transcendence and hope on this side of death.

Joel Mayward is Assistant Professor of Christian Ministries, Theology and the Arts at George Fox University in Oregon, USA. He is author of six books including The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables: Integrating Theology, Philosophy, and Film (2022) and Theology and the Films of Christopher Nolan: Cinematic Transcendence (2025). He is also a cultural critic and writes about the intersection of art and religion.

Acknowledgements
Intro: A Sun Came
1 Death with Dignity
2 Should Have Known Better
3 All of Me Wants All of You
4 Drawn to the Blood
5 Eugene
6 Fourth of July
7 The Only Thing
8 Carrie & Lowell
9 John My Beloved
10 No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross
11 Blue Bucket of Gold
Outro: The Greatest Gift
Bibliography
Notes

Erscheinungsdatum	30.10.2025
Reihe/Serie	33 1/3
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	118 x 164 mm
Gewicht	152 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Pop / Rock
ISBN-13	979-8-7651-3276-0 / 9798765132760
Zustand	Neuware