To me, as a queer/bi guy who's listened to Sufjan from A Sun Came! onwards, there's been a very consistent undertone of, let's say, homo-sensuality to his work. It's there (debatable! but there) in every album, and it seems to me that Age of Adz (which, on first listen, I full-stop interpreted as being about an faith/identity crisis triggered by a m-m-f love triangle) had him as open about it in his cryptic lyrics as you could expect. On Age of Adz, the last half with "Vesuvius", "All For Myself" (hairy chests! "bathing boy, amazing you!") and "Impossible Soul" especially seems (again, to me) to catalogue his internal struggle with his sexuality and faith, eventually ending confusedly with him telling his "girl, I want nothing less than pleasure" and his "boy, we made such a mess together". On Carrie & Lowell, the main subject is his mother, but his references on the album to disconnected lovers on "All of Me" (Manelich) and "Beloved of John" seem to be to men (though "Beloved" is also an obvious Biblical reference, it isn't necessarily only that). And as someone who's broken up with someone of one sex for someone of the other (not proud), the line "I am a man with a heart that offends with its lonely and greedy demands" cuts me in half.

I don't know, I can't say. Like I said, I've followed him for a while, read a lot of interviews, and he almost never discusses the specifics of his songs and, like, never broaches his love life. Once, I remember him saying that "Impossible Soul" was a story of him 'wanting to get with this girl, but I can't, because all this stuff is in the way...and then it becomes a song about the universe and everything else', or something like that. I never read him as gay and closeted, necessarily, but probably bi or some flavor of queer, and certainly sensitive and bewildered and yeah an adorably tortured soul who I'd love to show the way and the light. All the attempts to explain away these undertones strike me as a little silly…isn't it simpler at this point to assume that Suf has some same-sex feelings bordering on sexual/romantic, and that he's maybe a bit conflicted about them? It seems to me that this some of his work and focus clearer, and explains why he so rarely talks about his personal life outside of his songwriting. Again, this might all be wishful thinking. But also I called it on Kele Okereke after a couple listens to just that first album and "Tulips", so…