’Tis the Season for Sufjan Stevens

The latest in pop-culture news, recaps, and reviews, plus close reads, profiles, interviews, and more from Vulture.com. [Brand Logo]( a long talk [’Tis the Season for Sufjan]( The singer-songwriter reflects on what he’s learned about the holidays after releasing 100 Christmas songs. Illustration: Carolyn Figel Sufjan Stevens’s catalogue feels wild and untamable. In just a year span, between September 2020 and 2021, the singer-songwriter and Asthmatic Kitty Records founder debuted almost five hours of music: the pensive, electronic album[The Ascension](; the ambient, mournful [Convocations](; and the film-obsessed A Beginner’s Mind, where he and artist Angelo De Augustine wrote songs about a string of[horror]( and action-adventure movies. In the aughts, Sufjan’s Michigan and Illinois albums earned a massive following impressed not just by his heartfelt lyrics, elaborate arrangements, and affecting singing, but by the way songs like[“Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!”]( and “Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid)” imparted a sense of geography and history, however subtle. It was then, in 2006, with Illinois sales sailing past 100,000 units, when he released a delightfully quixotic array of projects, including Songs for Christmas, a five-volume set of holiday tracks the performer had originally gifted to friends. The song selection revealed him as a sophisticated collector of carols, and the expedition in the originals — from the ramshackle folk of “We’re Going to the Country!” to the boisterous big-band sound of “Get Behind Me Santa!” and “Christmas in July” — mapped all the creative turns it took to get from the embryonic ideas in his 1999 debut A Sun Came to the big mainstream breakthrough. [Read More]( Cyber Week Sale: [Subscribe for 75% off]( and unlock unlimited access to Vulture and everything New York. Plus, get exclusive access to The Strategist’s Incredibly Exhaustive Gift Guide. [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Stories We Think You’ll Like [Too Hot to Handle Faked Out Ten New Singles With Mario Lopez’s Help But don’t worry, Desiree and Lana are still torturing them.]( By Justin Curto [The 10 Best Versions of ‘Jingle Bells’ Kris Jenner and Barbra Streisand don’t appear together on many lists, but they do here.]( By Carrie Wittmer [Want to Try Bad With Money? Start Here. Highlighting the best episode of Gaby Dunn’s podcast.]( By Sean Malin [Los Bros Hernandez on Love and Rockets’ Most Memorable Women and Forgettable Men “As I was writing that story, I was thinking, This is not good. But I let it go because I knew it would have an effect on readers.”]( By Heidi MacDonald [The Sisi Syllabus: Empress Elisabeth Onscreen From early talkies to Netflix hit shows, the Austrian royal was the Hapsberg’s Diana.]( By Elle Carroll [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Today’s Crossword]( 16-Down, Three Letters: “___! I Feel Like a Woman!” Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Nicky J Sims/Getty Images for Bauer Media, Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images and Araya Doheny/Getty Images Vulture Recommends We consume it all so you don’t have to. Photo: Bob Berg/Getty Images Check out [Jason McBride’s Eat Your Mind](, the new biography of Kathy Acker, the experimental writer and punk-feminist icon who died in 1997. The book shows how difficult it is to categorize Acker, whose primary concern was the impossibility of definitively knowing who you are. [Read more from Vulture]( [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe](param=vulture-daily) | [privacy notice]( | [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on email newsletters, please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, 12th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2022, All rights reserved