Remember when indie rock turned into a whimsical, state-by-state geography lesson? Sufjan Stevens was our banjo-plucking pied piper, traversing the map while delivering two outlandishly baroque masterpieces about specific U.S. states. First came Michigan. Then Illinois. Then Illinois again, sort of. And then--well, we're still waiting.

Michigan and Illinois seemed to unite the whole cynical swath of music lovers: Here were two kid-friendly, parent-friendly, grandparent-friendly concept albums capable of topping Pitchfork's year-end lists and delighting your history teacher all at once. Yet by the last decade's end, the singer's overarching conceit had been mysteriously abandoned: Sufjan Stevens did not write and record an album about all 50 states. He didn't even make it out of the Great Lakes region. No wonder millennials have trust issues.

I was reminded of the 50 states project recently while traveling through Michigan. As I passed Ypsilanti and Romulus--names familiar to me, I confess, because of Sufjan Stevens--I couldn't resist revisiting the singer's tribute to his home state. Then I thought of the years I spent waiting for 48 more state albums, and I wrote a silly tweet. It touched a nerve. "This hits hard," one fan responded. "I even paid to see him dance in neon in 2010 cause I craved that sweet sweet Dakotas double album that never was." I'd tapped into a diaspora of Sufjan fans, of people who'd spent their college years sipping Natty Light while secretly wondering when the singer might tackle Alabama.

My subsequent investigation has undercovered indie-folk corruption of the most galling degree: Stevens never really planned on recording 50 state albums. That was a joke. We were duped, our trust stolen in an audacious act of grand theft banjo. (Stevens was not available for comment for this article, and while I'd love to tell you that is because he is busy conducting scrupulous research into Delaware, that's just wishful thinking.)