lufthansa airlines bordbuch, january, 1997
|
Suzanne Vega - Lady des Lyrischen Pop
Small, almost motionless, one is tempted to say unprepossessing , she stands there on the stage.The band strikes up a bossanova, and the singer's arms slowly begin to rotate in the air. The effect is as if she were about to take off. And then Suzanne Vega starts to sing. "I like to write about those moments when you're flying -you've lost one trapeze and you're about to get the other," says 37-year-old Suzanne Vega. In her songs and in her life she is equally concerned to capture those moments of apparent weightlessness. "The woman who fell from heaven" was how one critic described the shy artist when she made her debut with her album "Suzanne Vega" in 1985. The New York Times thought her "the strongest, most decisively shaped songwriting personality to come along in years," and by 1987 at the latest, with her hit "Luka," she was a star. At first she was widely compared to Leonard Cohen, and indeed, Ms. Vega calls the melancholy bard her role model, while her own songs of emotional anguish seem particularly suited for cheerless moments and wet days in the fall. For a time the image suited this introverted intellectual from New York: she gave infrequent performances, avoided interviews and was in all respects anything but a big mouth. But Suzanne Vega likes confusing her fans, and even today, she can't be pinned down. In recent years her style has oscillated between folk, swing, bossanova and hip-hop. The mix of styles and atmospheres has been with her since the cradle. Her stepfather was a writer from Puerto Rico, her baby-sitter listened to Motown soul, while her parents preferred cool jazz and bossanova. To pay her way through college, she worked as a receptionist by day and performed at folk clubs by night. It is amazing that Suzanne Vega's gentle voice, telling the world about such seemingly irrelevant topics as "Tom's Diner," her favorite New York café, still has an audience in the age of hip-hop. Like jazz-pop singer Sade, she has a voice that gets under your skin, and gives you goose-bumps. But her lyrics are far more profound than is usual in the pop business. In her songs with cheerful melodies, the content is sometimes shatteringly sober. Her sing-along hit "Luka" is about an abused girl. Conversely, those songs which sound melancholy often conceal a subliminal joie de vivre. In the last four years, little has been heard of Suzanne Vega. She's concentrated on composing film music (including the sound tracks for 'Dead Man Walking' and 'Truth about Cats and Dogs'). Her last album, "Nine Objects of Desire," is less melancholy than her earlier offerings. The song "My Favorite Plum," for example, is a ballad full of yearning, not for a person, but indeed for her a ripe plum, which hangs on a tree tantalizingly and seductively inaccessible. Suzanne Vega herself describes her latest record as far less intellectual than its predecessors. The singer has discovered the lightness of being. She attributes it to her having become a mother - her daughter Ruby is now two-and-a-half - and to her having married her producer Mitchell Froom. "When my daughter Ruby was born, my body changed," is how she explains her excellent condition, "and it affected my voice." And on her spirits. In "World Before Columbus" she finds tender words: "If your love were taken from me/Every light that's bright would soon go dim." It is a song of love for her daughter. Submitted by Orhun Bicakci |
Up to The Suzanne Vega Home Page