Sufjan Stevens' Illinois by FlaxmanR

The original cover art for the Illinois album had to be adjusted due to the unauthorized usage of WHAT COPYRIGHTED CHARACTER, who is associated with a rather ironically-named town of roughly 6,500 people in the far south of the state?

In an October 2009 interview, Stevens stated that the “Fifty States Project,” in which he would ostensibly release an album dedicated to each American state, was a “promotional gimmick.” The gimmick worked because Illinois was Stevens’ second such album; WHAT STATE, of which Stevens is a native, was the subject of his first such album, released two years prior to Illinois?

On the album’s third track, Stevens sings about being visited by the ghost of WHAT POET, a Galesburg native who famously authored the poem “Chicago” in 1914?

The small Central Illinois fast food chain Krekel’s advertises “Custard and Hamburgers,” yet its mascot is a chicken, as referenced in the lyrics “Chicken mobile with your rooster tail / I’ve had my fill and I know how bad it feels” (the lyrics might explain why Krekel’s does not receive a specific name check). These lyrics come from the song named for WHAT CITY, home to four of the seven Krekel’s locations?

The final verse of “Casimir Pulaski Day” includes the lines “In the morning, when you finally go / And the nurse runs in with her head hung low / And the _______ hits the window.” The name of WHAT STATE BIRD OF ILLINOIS fills in this blank?

Track 11 on the album is an instrumental piece titled “To the Workers of the _____ River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament.” The name of WHAT RIVER, which rises in Wisconsin, flows through multiple Illinois municipalities which take their names from it, and empties into the Mississippi just south of the Quad Cities, fills in this blank?

On Track 15, Stevens described an attack from a “predatory wasp” while swimming in a park in the northwest of the state. The park takes its name from WHAT SPECIFIC ROCK FORMATION named for a word for a defensive wall or fence, also notably applied to a stretch of cliffs just north of New York City?

Another instrumental track, Track 18, is titled “In this Temple as in the Hearts of Man for Whom He Saved the Earth.” This is an altered version of a line written by Royal Cortissoz for WHAT MONUMENT dedicated to a notable Illinois resident?

The title of track 20, “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders,” is a reference to WHAT MAN, a native of Alton, Illinois, who reached a height of over 8 feet 11 inches before his death at age 22 in 1940?

The album’s closing instrumental track is titled “Out of Egypt, into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals as I Run,” possibly an oblique reference to WHAT CITY, the state’s southernmost, pronounced differently from how one might expect?

“Put Sufjan Stevens on / And we’ll play your favorite song / ‘Chicago’ bursts to life / And your sweet smile remembers you” sings Gary Lightbody in the song “Hands Open” – released as a single and on the album “Eyes Open” by WHAT BRITISH ROCK BAND perhaps most notable for that album’s earlier single “Chasing Cars?”

A year after the release of Illinois, Stevens released WHAT FOLLOW-UP ALBUM, subtitled “Outtakes and Extras from the Illinois Album,” which included fully three alternate versions of “Chicago” along with “No Man’s Land” and the title track?