There are, of course, a ton of great songs about Michigan. And in another world, I might have been writing about Motown or 8 Mile or something along those lines. But we don’t live in that world; we live in Sufjan’s world. So the only real question I had was: which Sufjan song will top the list?
And the answer has to be this one. It’s quite simply one of the most beautiful and haunting songs ever created. Unlike some of the other highlights on the record, this one wears its Michiganness pretty lightly—only a quick name check of Paradise—but the heart shines through. The feelings are universal, quite literally so given the biblical implications, but they are also utterly specific. This isn’t a song about the abstraction of love or devotion. It’s about the intensely specific way that those feelings express themselves. The nation loses a soldier, but to the little girl in Ypsilanti that just means that her father will never be coming home again. The world loses its savior, and then finds him again, but to the grieving widow in Paradise, redemption isn’t just an idea; it’s a life boat in a stormy sea.
