I’d like to kick this off with a disclaimer - I only have a surface-level familiarity with Sufjan Stevens’s discography and I haven’t spent any time listening to his vast collection of Christmas songs. I am, however, slightly more familiar with Prince - which brings us to Sufjan’s cover of Prince’s “Alphabet St.”, released on Silver and Gold in 2012.

Sufjan’s cover takes a more chilled-out approach to the track, swapping the original’s slap-bass and horns for smooth electric piano and a drum loop, and Prince’s flamboyant vocal performance for a noticeably more mellow take. The groove is still there, perhaps making this the funkiest thing I’ve ever heard Sufjan do. It’s short and sweet, clocking in at 1:37, nearly a minute shorter than Prince’s original. Overall, it’s an interesting tidbit in Sufjan’s catalog, showcasing his less serious side and standing in stark contrast to his dark and melancholic folk ballads I’m more familiar with such as “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” or “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross.”

However, the track’s inclusion in the Sufjan Christmas songbook begs the question - what makes “Alphabet St.” a Christmas song? When Sufjan/Prince say that they’re “gonna kiss the first girl that they meet,” are the listeners supposed to imagine mistletoe? I doubt it. In Mark Hinog’s ranking of Sufjan Christmas songs, he concludes that “Sufjan can do whatever he wants [...], so it would be foolish to question him.” This is ultimately true, but I’m wondering if there’s more to it than that.

Sufjan is the kind of artist who painstakingly captures memories and personal anecdotes on records like Michigan and Carrie and Lowell. The holidays and the coming of a new year, for most people, hold traditions that are repeated year after year. Who’s to say that 1988 Sufjan didn’t get really into Prince around the holidays and now forever associates “Alphabet St.” with Christmas? Perhaps it really is foolish to question him.