SUZANNE VEGA

Born: Santa Monica, California, 11 July 1959

Genre: Folk

Best-selling album since 1990: Solitude Standing (1987)

Hit songs since 1990: "Tom's Diner," "99.9 F," "Caramel"

Suzanne Vega made her mark in pop music with her sad, evocative song about child abuse, the thoughtful 1987 hit "Luka." A folk-influenced singer/songwriter with a hushed voice, aloof persona, and propensity toward veiled, distanced examinations of emotions and relationships, she developed a devoted following in the late 1980s that continued through the 1990s. Her success helped pave the way for a score of female singer/songwriters, folk-influenced and otherwise, including Sinead O'Connor, Tracy Chapman, Michelle Shocked, and Shawn Colvin.

Vega grew up in Spanish Harlem in New York after her mother, a jazz guitarist, moved there following a divorce from Suzanne's father when Suzanne was two years old; she later remarried the Puerto Rican novelist Ed Vega. Vega found solace in folk music and taught herself to play the guitar at age eleven. She developed a following in the New York City folk circuit, and after three years of rejections, including two by A&M Records, her managers finally convinced A&M to sign her. Her self-titled debut had quick success both in England and the United States, selling 200,000 copies.

After overcoming a bout of writer's block, she produced a second album, Solitude Standing (1987). Vega had an accidental hit when British dance band DNA took Vega's a capella song "Tom's Diner," set it against a thumping bass and dance beat, and called it "Oh Suzanne." When she discovered the piracy, Vega allowed for the single's official release under its original title, and it became a hit in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Her experience with "Tom's Diner" seemed to contribute to the direction of her subsequent two albums, 99.9 F (1992) and Nine Objects of Desire (1996). For these albums she collaborated with the experimental producer Mitchell Froom, whom she married in 1995 and with whom she had a daughter, Ruby, in 1994. The production of Nine Objects of Desire brings a smoother, fuller sound to her compositions, though some critics felt that Froom's production ruined Vega's songwriting on the album. His production brings Vega's voice forward, allowing for an unusually funky vibe to permeate the recording and creating a sound that is more aligned with pop than folk music. From the waltzy "Honeymoon Suite," set in a Paris hotel room that offers an intimate window into marital bliss, to the first-person tale of a call girl, "Stockings," each tune is a short story. The bossa nova–flavored "Caramel" was a moderate hit for Vega. It begins with her crooning, "It won't do / To dream of caramel / To think of cinnamon and long for you," starting off a smart, subtle food-as-love-metaphor, tinged with touches of trumpets and a clarinet that carries itself through the course of the song.

Following her painful divorce from Froom in 1998, Vega released Songs in Red and Gray, one of her most critically hailed albums. It is less fussy and more low-key; in many ways it is a return to the introspective, acoustically oriented compositions of her earlier and more commercially successful albums. Vega wrote the songs on the album and performed them at the revered Songwriters Exchange, a Monday night songwriting workshop at the Cornelia Street Café in New York City's Greenwich Village. The album's delicately stirring arrangements are an apt accompaniment to Vega's cool vocals and her characteristically dark but hopeful story-songs.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Solitude Standing (A&M, 1987); 99.9 F (A&M, 1992); Nine Objects of Desire (A&M, 1992); Songs in Red and Gray (A&M, 2001).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

S. Vega, The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writing of Suzanne Vega (New York, 1999).

carrie havranek