‘Video Game’: Sufjan Steven guides his audience “from truth to transformation”
Throughout his entire career, it doesn’t feel like Sufjan Stevens has ever had a specific genre of music to call his own. Although there are certainly elements of genres like indie or folk rock laced throughout projects like Illinois or Carrie and Lowell, one of the best aspects of his music is getting the perspective of a real person, always using the resources that he has with him to suit whatever song he’s making. As the world entered the 2020s, ‘Video Game’ served as a reminder of what can happen when artists lose that humanity.
On the accompanying album, The Ascension, Stevens can be heard toying with different spaces within his sound, using various synthetic elements to get more artificial forms of emotion out of his performances. While some fans may have felt cheapened by the change in direction, this song became a quasi-mission statement for the record.
Having gone through an influx of diverse media consumption for the past decade and at the precipice of entering a whole new black hole with the 2020 lockdowns, Stevens’s perspective was to remind everyone of their natural instincts. Throughout the lyrics, he mentions not wanting to be a part of the video game the world puts people on, where they casually check-in for the day and try to get one notch further than they were the day before.
In an interview with Mojo, Stevens talked about wanting to fire up parts of his audiences, explaining (via Songfacts), “I’m trying to encourage people to live with an eagerness for truth and transformation. I know the sounds like a bunch of platitudes, but the album is a friendly reminder to the world that we can’t go on with business as usual, so maybe we need to challenge our way of life. We need to eradicate our former consciousness and move toward rebirth.”
Even in the context of synthetic elements, Stevens still leans on the natural aspects of his sound. Regardless of how many artificial pieces of software he’s processed through, it’s easy to hear this man pleading through the glitchy atmosphere for relief from the constant barrage of nonsense.
Coming from the same mind that wrote gripping emotional tales like Carrie and Lowell, it’s easy to see Stevens as trying to pick up the pieces of how to function in today’s society. Since he lost some of the most important people in his life, ‘Video Game’ is a plea for everyone around him to make something that matters rather than something that will evaporate as soon as they clock out for the day.
One of the best elements of the song is the language he decides to use. While the whole song plods along using the same line of ‘I don’t wanna’, what he says after those words is some of the more harrowing parts of the piece. From not wanting to put saints in chains to not making the next Julius Caesar, Stevens may as well be criticising the kind of mentality that he sees around him, where people are more inclined to blame first and ask questions later.
In a world where everything is meant to serve an algorithm, Stevens is willing to go against the grain, continuing, “So many people are seeking attention for the wrong reasons. I think we should all be doing our best work without looking for accolades or seeking reward.” Whereas most people see their favourite artists as superheroes among mere mortals, Stevens is looking to break down the barriers and find some human connection.
