According to the essay accompanying his new one-off single, Sufjan Stevens has been trying to write “Tonya Harding” for almost 30 years. Listening to the track, especially paired with its stunning music video, it’s hard to believe he ever struggled with it. In a discography filled with epic travelogues and tear-stained diary entries, “Tonya Harding” feels graceful and effortless: a series of verses unfolding with a warm, lilting candor. Telling the story of the Olympic figure skater who, among other things, was accused of conspiring an attack on a competing skater, Sufjan takes the tone of a pep-talking friend. “This world is a bitch, girl,” he sings sweetly. “Don’t end up in a ditch, girl.”
“Tonya Harding” is not Sufjan’s first character study, but it’s his first following the creative overhaul of Carrie & Lowell, the 2015 album that found him profiling himself and his family with exacting detail. Using that autobiographical record as a template, “Tonya Harding” eschews the writerly moves of his past. He doesn’t extend Harding’s story into a metaphor; he doesn’t psychoanalyze her childhood; he doesn’t wrap her into a larger narrative. Instead, he lets Tonya do the talking.
Sufjan released two equally powerful versions of “Tonya Harding”—a grander, more tragic rendition (in the key of D major) and a stripped-back approach (in Eb major). Both arrangements suit his strikingly literal couplets (“Well, she took quite a beating/So you’re not above cheating”) with melodies that drift and dance between his words. Here, Sufjan doesn’t draw any new conclusions about Harding’s story or aim to present her in a different light. Instead, he offers a simple tribute, as just one troubled American singing to another.
