Sufjan Stevens' Chicago has the power to warm just about anyone's heart - it provides you with six minutes of unadulterated happiness and has some intagnible quality to it that just inflates the euphoria within your chest.
When Illinois was released in 2005 it stunned critics with its orchestral grandeur, ambitious scope and evocative lyrics. It was ranked highly on multiple Albums of the Decade lists, including a #1 from Paste magazine, and has been both critically and popularly acclaimed. The whole album itself is so emotionally balaced - treading the fine line between sorrow and euphoria - and Chicago sits in the soul of the album, epitomising everything that it has come to represent. It's filled with joyous trumpeting, swooning violins and uplifting lyrics. The song seems to carry forward in a rush of released energy, and the lyrical content is uplifting without being cliched. Sufjan sings out 'I made a lot of mistakes' without regret or anger but with a reminiscent fondness - the song revolving around the idea of rebirth from past experiences ('to recreate us/ all things grow, all things grow'). It works so well, just like the album as a whole, because the song seems to take happiness from sorrow - for every trough in emotion, there is a larger peak of joy that seems to heal the wounds.
The video above is a great live version - Sufjan puts on such an incredible show and the whole band are insanely talented. His new album, which I've reviewed on here, was released a few weeks back and hopefully he'll be coming to Europe sometime next year. I can't wait for it.
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