For over a decade, I wrote weekly music reviews for a newspaper in Illinois. In 2005, I heard a mighty buzz about folk-rocker Sufjan Stevens and his album, “Illinois.” There was a lot of interest in the project, partly because Stevens has vowed to record an album inspired by each of the 50 states. Michigan was his first; Illinois was the second.
For the Land of Lincoln, there were songs about the Sears Tower, Superman and Metropolis, Casimir Pulaski Day and an unsettling tune about serial killer John Wayne Gacy. But it was about Chicago, the easternmost city on the Mother Road, that gained the lion’s share of attention. You know when Robert Christgau, the “Dean of Music Critics,” was calling “Chicago” the best song he’d heard that year, it was something special.
And it is. It’s as if Phil Spector had been loosed in the Windy City. “Chicago” captures the energy and glory of the City of the Big Shoulders better than any song I can think of.
Regrettably, Stevens never produced a video for it. But this simple footage of someone driving through that city’s busy streets, with “Chicago” as its soundtrack, does well enough.