Singer-Songwriters (Pop Music's Performer-Composers, From A to Zevon)
(Billboard Books (An imprint of Watson-Guptill Publications/New York)
Like another onetime folksinger who now can't be so easily classified - hint: he was born Robert Zimmerman - Suzanne Vega (b. Aug. 12, 1959, New York) has followed her muse to very strange places indeed. Raised in Spanish Harlem by a mother who was a musician and a Puerto Rican stepfather who wrote novels,Vega began writing poetry at an early age and songs when she was 14. Within two years, guitar in hand, she was playing at New York clubs like Folk City and the Speakeasy, drawing raves from the likes of the New York Times, and attracting major label interest. A&M Records signed her and , for her first two albums, astutely paired her with co-producer Lenny Kaye. Why "astutely"? Because Kaye was a well-respected former rock/folk critic, a performer himself, and perhaps most importantly, an integral figure in the Patti Smith Group - whose leader was one of the most pivotal female vocalist-poets of the punk-rock era. Thus Vega's eponymous solo album, released in April 1985, caught the ears of folk fans who'd heard the buzz about this fresh-faced and captivating New York folkie, and punky post- moderns who knew they wouldn't exactly be getting the next Odetta. "I wanted to take the folk tradition and make it contemporary," Vega told the Los Angelas Times in 1987, "toughen it up and harden the language, learn how to use words differently."
From the start, Vega's career zoomed, thanks to songs like "Marlene On The Wall", which - like much of her best work - was rich with imagery, tinged both with hopefullness and regret, and endearingly (considering her folk "roots") minimalist. Though the success of her first record was by no means minor - it spent 27 weeks on the Top Pop Albums chart - album number two, Solitude Standing, really remains her landmark. What propelled the album to gold status was the number three hit "Luka," Vega's supremely memorable, haunting tale of an abused tenement child, which was promoted by an equally stark music video often played by MTV. The album, very much in the public consciousness at the time, garnered three Grammy nominations.
Having earlier contributed a song ("Left of Center") to the platinum-selling Pretty In Pink soundtrack album and lyrics to two tracks on avant-composer Philip Glass's Songs from Liquid Days set - she had heavy friends - Vega now seemed primed to be a bigger pop sensation than ever. Or so it appeared. Though her 1990 follow-up album, Days Of Open Hand, was warmly received by critics - most of whom felt Vega was swiftly moving from her folkish roots to a new pop-rock hybrid - it lacked a hit single, and thus sold accordingly.
What happened next was, in one sense, a singer-songwriter's dream: she had a hit record that she had nothing to do with. Her a cappella performance of "Tom's Diner" was, without her permission, lifted from her Solitude Standing album, given a hip-hop backing by U.K. group D.N.A, and transformed into a hit dance record. Vega heard it, loved it, and asked for its legitimate release, thrilled that her music was being heard by a whole new audience. "If I thought it was bad," she disarmingly told the press at the time, "I would have sued them."
What began as a fluke soon became a mini-phenomenon: in 1991, A&M released Tom's Album, a hilarious compilation of 13 different "versions" of "Tom's Diner" - by such artists as reggae singers Michigan and Smiley and informal R.E.M. spin-off group Bingo Hand Job - that included the Vega/D.N.A "original." If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it may be that despite the context, it's the song that matters. That Vega was writing better ones than ever was noted in nearly every rapturous review of 1992's 99.9 F - which, with its startling use of electronic and industrial noises, was called "Suzanne Vega meets Nine Inch Nails" by a few smarmy critics, albeit affectionately.
Very few singer-songwriters - perhaps really only Joni Mitchell - have managed to so conspicuously grow in musical and lyrical presentation simultaneously, and at so rapid a rate. For that matter, even fewer have inspired another performer's stage name, as Reprise Records singer Luka Bloom will happily attest. No one knows what Vega will do next - and what more could any artist ask for?
TOP ALBUMS TOP SONGS
Suzanne Vega (A&M, '85) "Marlene On The Wall" (A&M,'85)
Solitude Standing (A&M, '87, 11) "Luka" (A&M, '87, 3)
Days Of Open Hand (A&M, '90) "Tom's Diner" (featured with D.N.A., (A&M, '90, 5)
99.9 F (A&M, '92)
Submitted by Paul Murphy
VegaNet@aol.com
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