Suzanne Vega

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Image:Ckbook.jpg Suzanne Nadine Vega (born July 11, 1959) is an American songwriter and singer known for her poetic lyrics and eclectic folk inspired music.

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Biography

Suzanne Vega was born in Santa Monica, California, but, at the age of one moved with her mother (a computer systems analyst) and her stepfather (a writer from Puerto Rico) to New York City, where she grew up in a socially problematic area (Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side). At the age of nine she began to write poems; she wrote her first song at age 14. Later she attended the New York City High School of the Performing Arts (the school seen in the feature film musical Fame), where she studied modern dance.

Music, however, was her first love. While majoring in English literature at Columbia University's Barnard College, she performed in small venues in Greenwich Village, where she was a regular contributor to the Monday night songwriters group at the Cornelia Street Cafe. In 1984, she received a major label record contract.

Vega's eponymous debut album, Suzanne Vega, was released in 1985 and was well received by critics in the US; it reached platium status in Britain. Produced by Lenny Kaye and Steve Addabbo, the songs feature Vega's acoustic guitar in straightforward arrangements and oppose the "bigger is better" ethos of the mid-1980s. Vega's POV vignettes of characters and even inanimate objects such as in "Small Blue Thing" are taut and introspective, in the manner of the singer-songwriters of the 1970s, such as Leonard Cohen.

Her sophomore effort, Solitude Standing (1987) garnered critical and commercial success including two successful singles: "Tom's Diner", and "Luka". . With this album Vega was heralded as part of a second generation of female singer-songwriters including Tracy Chapman, Michelle Shocked and Shawn Colvin. "Luka" is written about and from the point of view of a battered child—at the time an uncommon subject for a pop hit¹. While continuing a focus on Vega's acoustic guitar, the music is more strongly pop-oriented and features fuller more sensual arrangements. The a capella "Tom's Diner" was later a hit remixed by two British dance producers under the name DNA (not to be confused with the no wave band DNA) and Vega recorded new vocal tracks specially for the remix.

Vega's third album, Days of Open Hand (1990) signified a change in style: the music became more experimental, and the lyrics expressed greater emotion. The album lacked hit single material and is best considered as a whole.

In 1992 she released the album 99.9F° ("ninety-nine point nine Fahrenheit degrees"). It consists of an eclectic mixture of folk music, dance beats and industrial music. This gives a sunny quality to the work in contrast to the previous album. The songs are short and the lyric style compressed.

The fifth album, Nine Objects of Desire, was released in 1996. The music varies between a frugal, simple style and the industrial production of 99.9F°. This album contains "Caramel", featured in the movie The Truth About Cats and Dogs and, later, the trailer for the movie Closer. A song not included on that album, "Woman on the Tier," was featured on the soundtrack of the movie Dead Man Walking.

September 2001 saw the release of a new album, Songs In Red and Gray. Though many dub it a 'divorce-album', only three songs are directed at Vega's divorce from record producer Mitchell Froom.

At the memorial concert for her brother Timothy Vega in December 2002, she began as the long-term subject of a direct cinema documentary, Some Journey, by director Christopher Seufert of Mooncusser Films. This is rumoured to be released in 2006.

In 2003, the 21-song greatest hits compilation Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega was released. (The UK version of Retrospective included an eight-song bonus CD as well as a DVD containing twelve songs.) In the same year she was invited by Grammy Award-winning jazz guitarist Bill Frisell to play at the Century of Song concerts at the famed RuhrTriennale in Germany.

She plans to go into the recording studios in the spring of 2006, with the aim of releasing a new studio album in late 2006.

Vega has a daughter, Ruby Froom. The band Soul Coughing's Ruby Vroom album took its name from her, with Suzanne's approval, though she requested a slight change.

On February 11, 2006, Vega married Paul Mills, a lawyer and a poet. They originally met each other at Folk City on West 4th Street in 1981. In their own humorous words, Mr. Mills proposed to Miss Vega in May, 1983, and she accepted his proposal on Christmas Day, 2005.

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Discography

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Albums

  • Suzanne Vega, 1985
  • Solitude Standing, 1987 - UK - 2, US - 2
  • Days of Open Hand, 1990 - US - 7
  • 99.9F°, 1992
  • Nine Objects of Desire, 1996
  • Songs in Red and Gray, 2001
  • Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega, 2003 (Featuring several non-album tracks)
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Singles

  • "Marlene On The Wall", 1985
  • "Small Blue Thing", 1985
  • "Knight Moves", 1985
  • "Marlene On The Wall" second release, 1986
  • "Left Of Centre", 1986
  • "Gypsy", 1986
  • "Luka", 1987
  • "Tom's Diner", 1987
  • "Solitude Standing", 1987
  • "Book Of Dreams", 1990
  • "Tired of Sleeping", 1990
  • "Men in a War", 1990
  • "Tom's Diner (DNA remix)", 1990
  • "Rusted Pipe (DNA remixes)", promotional, 1991
  • "In Liverpool", 1992
  • "Blood Makes Noise", 1992
  • "99.9F°", 1992
  • "When Heroes Go Down", 1993
  • "Caramel", 1996
  • "No Cheap Thrill", 1996
  • "Birth-day", promotional, 1997
  • "World before Columbus", 1997
  • "Headshots", promotional, 1997
  • "Book & a Cover", 1998
  • "Rosemary / Remember me", 1999
  • "Widow's Walk", promotional, 2001
  • "Last Year's Troubles", promotional, 2001
  • "Penitent", promotional, 2001
  • "(I'll never be) Your Maggie May", promotional, 2002
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Trivia

  • In computing circles, Suzanne Vega is known for her song "Tom's Diner", which was used as the reference track in an early trial of the MP3 compression system (earning her the distinction of being "The Mother of the MP3"). [1]
  • "Tom's Diner" takes place in Tom's Restaurant at 112th Street and Broadway in New York City. Exterior shots of the same restaurant appear in the television sitcom Seinfeld as the eatery where Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer hang out. [2]
  • In a deleted scene from the 1994 feature film Pulp Fiction, the character Vincent Vega mentions that Suzanne is his cousin [3].
  • Suzanne Vega auditioned for the role eventually given to Madonna in the 1985 feature film Desperately Seeking Susan.[4]
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Selected quotes

¹ On a 1987 Swedish television special, Suzanne Vega said this about the song "Luka" :

A few years ago, I used to see this group of children playing in front of my building, and there was one of them, whose name was Luka, who seemed a little bit distinctive from the other children. I always remembered his name, and I always remembered his face, and I didn't know much about him, but he just seemed set apart from these other children that I would see playing. And his character is what I based the song Luka on. In the song, the boy Luka is an abused child—In real life I don't think he was. I think he was just different.[5]

Also, in an ASCAP interview, she responded to a question about "Luka":

Interviewer: When you can touch so many people with songs like "Luka," it must be pretty rewarding.
 Vega: Yeah. It’s an amazing feeling. Especially since that particular song is a very special song. It’s a song about child abuse, so therefore it does touch a lot of people in a different way than if it were, say, a love song or some other kind of song. [6]
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External links

fr:Suzanne Vega it:Suzanne Vega he:סוזן וגה nl:Suzanne Vega no:Suzanne Vega pl:Suzanne Vega fi:Suzanne Vega zh:苏珊·维加

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