Sufjan Stevens has shared a new single called ‘Will Anybody Ever Love Me?’ – listen to it below.
The song will appear on the Detroit singer-songwriter’s 10th studio album ‘Javelin’, which is due for release on October 6 via Asthmatic Kitty Records (pre-order/pre-save here).
“Will anybody ever love me?/ For good reasons/ Without grievance, not for sport/ Will anybody ever love me?/ In every season/ Pledge allegiance to my heart/ Pledge allegiance to my burning heart,” Stevens ponders in the chorus.
After additional instrumentation is brought in, the musician pleads for forgiveness and gently sings of the “heartache and misery” he’s caused in the past. “Take my suffering as I take my vow/ Wash me now, anoint me/ With that golden blade,” he adds.
Stevens – who self-produced ‘Will Anybody Ever Love Me?’, and played every instrument on the single – is accompanied by guest backing vocalists Adrienne Maree Brown, Hannah Cohen and Megan Lui.
“The first time I sang the song I started crying, I was so moved by the honesty of the questions,” Brown said in a statement.
Cohen added: “Sufjan is an impossibly brave and gifted writer. Being in the studio with Sufjan is like watching an alchemist at work. He creates a new realm, building our voices from a gentle choir, then morphing us into sirens raging from the sea.”
Lui commented: “‘Will Anybody Ever Love Me?’ felt like a glimpse into Sufjan’s past records but spins into an epic collage of voices and instruments. His vision of melody and composition are astonishing and working with him and Hannah in the room was pure joy.”
The track is accompanied by an official music video, directed by Stevens’ long-time collaborator Stephen Halker. Tune in above.
‘Javelin’ marks Stevens’ first solo album since 2020’s ‘The Ascension’, and his first back in “full singer-songwriter mode” since 2015’s ‘Carrie & Lowell’, per a press release. The forthcoming LP’s lead single, ‘So You Are Tired’, arrived last month.
On the whole, the 10-track collection will see “the entire experience of Stevens’ 25-year career brought to bear in four-minute bursts of choral, orchestral, and electric wonder”. The release will also come with a 48-page book of art and essays created by Stevens.
The ‘Javelin’ tracklist is as follows:
1. ‘Goodbye Evergreen’
2. ‘A Running Start’
3. ‘Will Anybody Ever Love Me?’
4. ‘Everything That Rises’
5. ‘Genuflecting Ghost’
6. ‘My Red Little Fox’
7. ‘So You Are Tired’
8. ‘Javelin (To Have And To Hold)’
9. ‘Shit Talk’
10. ‘There’s A World’
