For Pride Month, Sufjan Stevens released a new four-track EP featuring two new songs that he states are his attempt to "write an upbeat and sincere love song without conflict, anxiety or self-deprecation." One of those tracks is "Love Yourself," based on a 1996 four-track demo that you can also hear via the EP. Hear the fleshed-out, synthpop version below.
Stevens also penned an essay last month encouraging readers to embrace love. He writes:
RuPaul says: “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?” Jesus said: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Both suggest that self-love is what makes us human: you cannot love others without loving yourself. Which also means that we must cultivate love as a private and personal practice before we can extend love to others. To love yourself, you must know yourself. And to know yourself, you must love yourself. Love then is a sublime and universal understanding of self and of others. Love is a discipline of one’s own self-consciousness. Love is beautiful. Love is just. It must endure, it must evolve, it must expand, it must be born-again.
Read the complete essay online here.
