Why I can't look away from Sufjan Stevens' "John Wayne Gacy, Jr."
This had not happened for any of the first 60 episodes that I recorded for You, Me and An Album, but for Episode 61, I felt the need to put a warning in the podcast about the sensitive nature of the content. The impetus for that warning was the discussion that Sean Inderbitzen and I had about the track, “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.,” from Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois album. Sean recited the song’s chilling second verse, and given that it made both us of extremely uncomfortable, I thought that listeners unfamiliar with the album should be alerted before going forward with the episode.
I’ve noted before on the podcast that I’m squeamish about intense — and especially violent — lyrics, but Sean and I agreed that it’s hard to just skip past “John Wayne Gacy, Jr..” While the latter part of the first verse and the entirety of the second verse are disturbing and sickening, the song starts out with a sad but sympathetic picture of the song’s subject as a young kid. He was likable but had to contend with troubled parents and an accident that resulted in a blood clot in his brain. Then after the horror spelled out in the subsequent lines, Stevens connects his own experience with Gacy’s, singing about the secrets he has hid “beneath the floor boards.” He leaves us off in a vulnerable place, finishing the song with a couple of shallow and barely-audible breaths laid against a backdrop of some soft piano notes played over a sustained chord.
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