suzanne vega

Suzanne Vega fought things she couldn't see with the emotional undertow of this literate urban folk.    Growing up in Spanish Harlem, Vega began writing poetry in her early teens, and by the age of sixteen was performing her own songs on the in small clubs.  Vega looks back:  "It was great… I had a lot of songs and I was writing steadily – a song every few months – and I could try them out at a leisurely pace. I was with friends who had high standards for writing, and so it was good to try to meet them...The record deal came after a great review in the New York Times. We’d made a demo tape and my manager had already submitted it to A&M Records twice. However, after this particular review they came running…"


The sessions for her eponymous debut featured  Suzanne Vega on vocals and  acoustic guitar;    Steve Addabbo on background vocals, synclavier guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, and electric guitar;   Darol Anger on electric violin;  Frank Christian on acoustic guitar and electric slide guitar;  Paul Dugan on bass and vertical bass;   Sue Evans on drums and percussion;   Jon Gordon on electric guitar;  Peter Gordon on string arrangement;   Frank Gravis on bass;   Shem Guibbory on violin;  Mark Isham on synthesizers;   John Mahoney on synclavier programming;   Maxine Neuman on cello;   C.P. Roth on synthesizers, piano, and organ;   and Roger Squitero on percussion.   Vega admits:   "If they'd say, 'Come out and sing it again,' I'd say, 'I don't want to, I sang it alright the last time,' or 'You sing it yourself.'   Steve (producer Steve Addabbo) has told me there were times he wanted to really throttle me, but then I never would have sung again."

'Suzanne Vega' went to number ninety-one in the US, fifty-four in Germay, forty-two in Sweden, eleven in the Netherlands and the UK,  and number nine in New Zealand.  Vega would express at the time:  "People who are expecting a folk album are surprised and people who are expecting a rock album don't quite get it...I like contemporary music and I like old-fashioned music, so I take things that I like from each of those and mix them all together.  I suppose it confuses some people, but I like it...It's a little frustrating to go into a record store in New York and see that it's in the folk section, which is always either way in the back or upstairs or buried somewhere down some hole. I feel a little bad about that. I don't want it to be misrepresented, but I still want it to be what it is...Some people say 'I just can't understand' or 'Who wants folk music back?' and that's a mistake.  Some people just don't want to think or make judgment for themselves. People want things to be clear for them...There's a lot I don't know about my songs.  What I have to say is not always clear. I think I speak for a lot of people, I'm just not sure who they are yet."

http://www.suzannevega.com/









"Marlene on the Wall"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHZV7NOqEY4




Even if I am in love with you
All this to say, what's it to you
Observe the blood, the rose tattoo
Of the fingerprints, on me from you

Other evidence has shown that
You and I are still alone we
Skirt around the danger zone
And don't talk about it later

Marlene watches from the wall
Her mocking smile says it all
As she records the rise and fall
Of every soldier passing

But the only soldier now is me
I'm fighting things I cannot see
I think it's called my destiny
That I am changing

Marlene on the wall

Well I walk to your house in the afternoon
By the butcher shot, with the sawdust strewn
Don't give away the goods too soon
Is what she might have told me

And I tried so hard, to resist
When you held me in your handsome first
And reminded me, of the night we kissed
And of why I should be leaving

Marlene watches from the wall
Her mocking smile says it all
As she records the rise and fall
Of every soldier passing

But the only soldier now is me
I'm fighting things I cannot see
I think it's called my destiny
That I am changing

Marlene on the wall

Marlene watches from the wall
Her mocking smile says it all
As she records the rise and fall
Of every soldier passing

But the only soldier now is me
I'm fighting things I cannot see
I think it's called my destiny
That I am changing

Marlene on the wall

And even if I am in love with you
All this to say, what's it to you
Observe the blood, the rose tattoo
Of the fingerprints, on me from you

Other evidence has shown that
You and I are still alone we
Skirt around the danger zone
And don't talk about it later

And I tried so hard, to resist
When you held me in your handsome first
And reminded me, of the night we kissed
And of why I should be leaving

Marlene watches from the wall
Her mocking smile says it all
As the records the rise and fall
Of every man who's been here

But the only one here now is me
I'm fighting things I cannot see
I think it's called my destiny
That I am changing, changing, changing, changing, changing

Marlene watches from the wall
Her mocking smile says it all
As she records the rise and fall
Of every soldier passing

But the only soldier now is me
I'm fighting things I cannot see
I think it's called my destiny
That I am changing


Marlene on the wall



"Small Blue Thing"
 "That day, I felt like a small blue thing and I said, OK, no one has ever said that before, so I would like to give this thing a voice."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z7VlOToPKs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oclv-EqJbvY




"Neighborhood Girls"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oia4UTcbSw







'Suzanne Vega' 
full album:

https://myspace.com/suzannevega/music/album/suzanne-vega-8340554

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4C6B1A79513F1313






All songs written by Suzanne Vega.

"Cracking" – 2:49
"Freeze Tag" – 2:36
"Marlene on the Wall" – 3:40
"Small Blue Thing" – 3:54
"Straight Lines" – 3:49
"Undertow" – 3:26
"Some Journey" – 3:38
"The Queen and the Soldier" – 4:48
"Knight Moves" – 3:36
"Neighborhood Girls" – 3:21

99.9f°

Suzanne Vega made an adventurous development in her folk sound with the industrial electronic experimentation of this deep dark danceable delight. With the unexpected success of the DNA remix of 'Tom's Diner', Vega was ready to move in a new musical direction. She enlisted Mitchell Froom to produce her new album '99.9F°' and he ended up doing the next one as well: "Working with Mitchell was a lot of fun because he was bass-led. When we were working on those two records , Mitchell played a lot of the bass parts. He was influenced by soul music and Motown, so he brought a whole other side to the records I made with him. I didn’t want to let go of that."


With Vega on vocals and acoustic guitar, Jerry Marotta on drums and percussion, Bruce Thomas on bass, David Hidalgo on electric guitar, and Froom on keyboards and string arrangements; the sessions at Dreamland in Bearsville, NY, Sunset Sound Factory in Los Angeles, and the Magic Shop in New York City also included Richard Thompson, Richard Pleasance, and Tchad Blake on electric guitar; Michael Visceglia on fretless bass; Marc Shulman on bouzouki; Jerry Scheff on acoustic bass; Greg Smith on baritone sax; Sid Page and Joel Derouin on violin; Maria Newman on viola; and Larry Corbett on cello. Froom dissuaded Marotta from using standard drums and had him try anything else from kitchen utensils to indigenous instruments to produce a completely different sound.


 '99.9F°'  went to eighty-six in the US, fifty-six in Australia, thirty-eight in New Zealand, twenty-seven in Germany, twenty-four in Switzerland, and twenty in the UK. Froom was also nominated for a Grammy for Producer of the Year. Vega and Froom were married in 1995; they separated in 1998. Their daughter, Ruby Froom was born on July 8, 1994.













http://www.suzannevega.com/















'99.9F°'
"It is about internal temperature. When I refer to temperature, I mean the way you feel when you're aroused in some way, whether it's through fear, anger or love. The title stands for a slight fever. Cos the normal temperature in the Fahrenheit system is 98.6°. So it means a little sick. Enough to hear things in a strange way and enough to see things in a peculiar way. A little bit off the normal...It describes the stance of the album, which is not normal, off the norm, not wildly feverish but off the norm enough to create tension, enough to give you a straight dizzy hallucinatory feeling but not so much that you feel that you're out of your mind in listening to it. It seemed slightly hotter than maybe some of my other albums. the other albums have a much cooler tone to the whole sound of them."

'Blood Makes Noise' went to number one on the US modern rock tracks chart. Vega says: "If you have a song called 'Blood Makes Noise' you have to make noise with it, you can't sing it softly, with a guitar and have pretty voices in the back. You have to use the vocabulary of the song. When I had originally conceived it, I had no music. And in the beginning, when I was first working with Mitchell, I was very nervous, because he had worked with all of these heroes of mine, like Elvis Costello. So we were sitting in a room and I was feeling like an idiot, because in the beginning you don't know if the songs are any good. So I was looking at him and I said 'well, I have this song, it's kind of a weird song'. Then he asked 'how does it go?' and I replied 'I don't have any music for it' and he said 'well, just sing it'. So I just sang it into the air. I felt a little embarrassed but then I explained to him that I would like the song to sound like The Ramones, fast and nervous and with a lot of guitars. Mitchell listened to me but he threw that idea away. I didn't know that he had done that but he did. The next day I came in he already had the bass line and the crushing noise. For some reason it was funny to hear that bass line and that crushing noise with the music. It made me laugh and I thought that that was the right thing for that song, because it made me laugh and there was something about the way the music and the lyrics fitted together that was funny and sort of cynical but sarcastic at the same time. And I don't know why. It's one of those things that I would have to go and dissect it and analyze it. All I knew was that it made me laugh and it seemed good. So it was unintentional and I liked it. It fitted with my own sense of humor."

'In Liverpool'
"This was one I wasn't sure would fly, because it's bits and pieces, it's a mood really and a fantasy. It came about because I was on tour and I was in Liverpool and I was lying on the bed of the hotel we were staying in. And I was trying to take a nap and there was this enormous clamoring going on across the street. We were staying across the street from a cathedral. I started to think about one of my first boyfriends, who was from Liverpool. That started to put me in the mood of the books like 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', and things that had to do with bells, and the ringing of bells. I was thinking about old loves, so there was this sort of nostalgic feeling to the whole afternoon. So I took the moments that made sense and put them altogether in the song."









'Rock in This Pocket (Song of David)' 
Vega says: "On a track like 'Rock In This Pocket', which is about King David, that's not about me and a man, necessarily. It's about a small person against an institution. I wrote this song before the riots happened in LA, but there's that sense of powerlessness and you want to get the attention from someone... and so you have a rock in your pocket and the urge is to throw it. It's not necessarily against a man, especially not a man whom I'm equal to. It's about someone in power, someone much bigger than I am."













'Fat Man and Dancing Girl'
"The way I was thinking of it was almost like a shadow puppet; the thing that is really causing the shadow is the thing that's behind the screen. Most of the show is concealed from view, meaning the real life no one sees. It's the thing that happens when I go home, or when I think about my own life or when I think about other people's lives. The thing that is the most interesting about people is the way they are when no one is looking at them or the way they are when they're in private. And to me that is the kind of show that I give. I don't give a glamorous show. I don't come on stage in costumes or outfits. In this particular song, I'm playing at being the dancing girl. But, when I say, "most of the show is concealed from view," the real heart of the whole show is the thing that I don't do on stage. It's the private part. The activity the lyrics point at is the real song."






















'Song of Sand'
"It was intended to be about the Gulf War. It was probably as close to a political song as I'll ever get."

























'Letter From New York' documentary


part 1






part 2















full album:

All songs written and composed by Suzanne Vega, except where noted. 

1. "Rock in This Pocket (Song of David)"   3:20

2. "Blood Makes Noise"   2:28

3. "In Liverpool"   4:40

4. "99.9F°"   3:16

5. "Blood Sings"   3:17

6. "Fat Man and Dancing Girl" (Vega, Mitchell Froom) 2:19

7. "(If You Were) In My Movie"   3:05

8. "As a Child"   2:55

9. "Bad Wisdom"   3:23

10. "When Heroes Go Down"   1:54

11. "As Girls Go"   3:27

12. "Song of Sand"   3:28

13. "Private Goes Public" (bonus) 1:57

solitude standing

New York folk poet Suzanne Vega added a little textured gloss to her sound and drew on a mix of old and new songs for her triumphant sophomore album. ‘Solitude Standing’ was produced by Lenny Kaye and Steve Addabbo at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock and RPM Sound Studios in New York City. Vega recalls: “I think Steve and Lenny, who did both ‘Suzanne Vega’ and ‘Solitude Standing’ together, were inexperienced. We were all sort of hashing it out in the studio, so when I listen to those records, even though they were the most successful ones, I’m not always that happy with how they all came out.” In any case, the pop production did make her more accessible and launched her into the public eye. ‘Solitude Standing’ was a worldwide hit, going to number eleven in the US, eight in Switzerland, seven in Australia, six in Germany, two in the UK, and number one in New Zealand. The album was nominated for three Grammys including Record of the Year and went platinum in the US and the UK.
















http://www.suzannevega.com/









"Tom's Diner" was written 1981 while Vega was eating at Tom's Restaurant on the corner of Broadway and 112th Street in New York City, which is the same restaurant depicted as Monk’s Café in ‘Seinfeld’. The acappella album version was a top thirty hit in Ireland.

The song became a hit in 1990 when British production duo DNA remixed it with a beat. Rather than sue, Vega and A&M decided to release it as a single. It became a worldwide smash going to number five in the US, number two in the UK, and topped the charts in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

DNA feat. Suzanne Vega ~ Tom's Diner from Maria Perescu on Vimeo.

"Luka" was written in 1984 and became an unlikely hit around the world, going to number three on the US pop chart. “It was a big surprise to write a song like 'Luka' that became so popular in part because it was written from the perspective of a boy being abused by his parents... Maybe at that moment it touched a nerve in society that the other songs didn’t, at least not in such a widespread way. I got a lot of letters from people in child abuse agencies complaining to me about “Luka,” saying that I’d written it “incorrectly” and that the correct thing to do is empower the child rather than make him feel bad. I didn’t follow that way of thinking about the issue. Because they made me so angry, I kept those letters for a while before throwing them away. My correspondents wanted me for a cause and felt I hadn’t expressed myself according to their rules.”

"Solitude Standing" was co-written by Vega, Michael Visceglia, Anton Sanko, Marc Shulman, Stephen Ferrera.

“Solitude stands in the doorway
And I'm struck once again by her black silhouette
By her long cool stare and her silence
I suddenly remember each time we've met
And she turns to me with her hand extended
Her palm is split with a flower with a flame
And she says ‘I've come to set a twisted thing straight’
And she says ‘I've come to lighten this dark heart’
And she takes my wrist, I feel her imprint of fear
And I say ‘I've never thought of finding you here’”

"Calypso" was written in 1978. “It was my first year in college and I was taking this Humanities course, and one of the first things we had to read was Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ and I remember being struck by the whole situation. I had a boyfriend at the time that would call me ‘Circe’ as a nickname to annoy me, and it did annoy me. And I don’t feel I’m like Circe, I’m not turning anybody into swine. If I’m like any goddess around here, I suppose I’m more like Calypso, because he was always leaving. So that’s what goaded me into writing the song.”

Vega co-wrote ‘Language’ with Visceglia.

Written in 1978, “‘Gypsy’ was a sincere love song to a man that I was involved with. I still feel myself to be the narrator of that song.”

‘Solitude Standing’ 

full album:

All songs written by Suzanne Vega in 1986–87 except as noted

"Tom's Diner" – 2:09 (written 1981)

"Luka" – 3:52 (written 1984)

"Ironbound/Fancy Poultry" (Vega, Anton Sanko) – 6:19

"In the Eye" (Vega, Marc Shulman) – 4:16

"Night Vision" (Vega, Sanko) – 2:47

"Solitude Standing" (Vega, Visceglia, Sanko, Shulman, Stephen Ferrera) – 4:49

"Calypso" – 4:14 (written 1978)

"Language" (Vega, Visceglia) – 3:57

"Gypsy" – 4:04 (written 1978) Produced by Steve Addabbo, Lenny Kaye and Mitch Easter

"Wooden Horse (Caspar Hauser’s Song)" (Vega, Visceglia, Sanko, Shulman, Ferrera) – 5:13

"Tom's Diner (Reprise)" – 2:40