Suzanne Vega on the Best and Weirdest Moments of Her Career

In the early ’90s, Karlheinz Brandenburg was searching for a song with optimal humanity. As the creator of the MP3, his ideal test subject needed to be warm enough to challenge his highly refined compression algorithm. Then, down the hallway from his office in West Germany, he heard the radio playing a track with vocals cool and strong: “I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner.” This was the voice of Suzanne Vega, a singer with little in the way of vocal dynamics or overt flourish, just a diction of great clarity and control. That song, “Tom’s Diner,” went on to become the first MP3 — an innovation that some believe set in motion the music industry’s decline.

“No, I’ve not had sleepless nights thinking about my part in the making of the MP3,” Vega said with cool insouciance. Speaking over Zoom, she remains as poised as she is in song, possessing the diamond-hard confidence of a seasoned New Yorker.

A leader of the ’80s folk revival, Vega brought to the scene a journalistic eye and a flaneur’s disposition, keenly observing her surroundings and distilling them into song with clean precision. She went multiplatinum with her first two albums: 1985’s self-titled debut and 1987’s Solitude Standing, which featured two songs — “Tom’s Diner” and “Luka” — that went on to become highly unlikely standards, with the former sung a capella and the latter being a song about child abuse. Despite the grievous subject matter, there is not a single note in Vega’s catalogue that could be heard as mawkish or emotionally overwrought. Her music is confrontational, never escapist; it displays a courage of heart that isn’t machine replicable.

That sense of humanity is stark on Flying With Angels, Vega’s first full-length album of new music in 11 years (which she will bring to New York’s Town Hall on June 14th). Though it contains her usual bedrock of austere folk, this time the music comes ornamented by unlikely flourishes of soul, post-rock, and prog, which add an ironic depth to Vega’s lyrics about the unraveling of democracy and the rats of New York City.

Brandenburg never could quite replicate the roundness and streetwise savvy of Vega’s voice. What we hear in his MP3 is a kind of flattening. “But they said, ‘No, it’s an exact replica,’” Vega remembers. Decades later, Vega’s music still challenges that flatness. It is the real thing.

Rejection that hurt the most

I was rejected by A&M twice before they signed me the third time. The rejection letter that went up on the wall in my manager Ron Fierstein’s office said, “Suzanne Vega has no sense of melody.” We had sent them “Cracking,” which I felt was a good example of how modern I was. I was like, “We don’t even need melody. We’re so far beyond that that we can just do this song that’s spoken word, because why not?” So we sent it to them to show them my strength and to show what separated me from other folk singers. And then they sent that letter back.

Song that drew the most unexpected reaction

On the first album, there’s a song called “Undertow.” My sister asked me to sing it at her first wedding. My brother thought that was inappropriate because he had decided the song was about oral sex. First of all, just because it’s on your mind doesn’t mean that it’s on everybody’s. That was not, in fact, what I was writing about, even though one might surmise that from the opening line: “I believe right now if I could I would swallow you whole.” For a moment, that song was controversial. They were also thinking of sending it to radio as a single back then, which seems mind-blowing to me. They decided not to do that.

Favorite “Tom’s Diner” interpretation

The one I liked best was this woman named Nikki D, who did a version called “Daddy’s Little Girl.” I also went back and listened to Tupac’s “Dope Fiends Diner” recently, which was kind of interesting to see now in the fullness of history. The other one I liked was Danger Mouse’s — he did a mashup of “Tom’s Diner” and 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.”

Most humbling admirer

I would say Prince. I got a handwritten letter from him, which was a thing of art and beauty. He drew a little flower, and he wrote “Thank God for you.” He liked the song “Luka.” He was at the Grammys when I performed that year. He jumped to his feet at the end of the performance, and it’s a moment I’ve never forgotten. I think of that as sort of the pinnacle of those years.

I had hoped to meet him. He came to a show and I thought, Oh, I’ll meet him then. But he was, you know, kind of eccentric. He waited until everyone came into the venue and he came in with his bodyguards, sitting on the flight cases by the side of the stage. When I sang “Luka,” which at that moment in time was the fourth song in the set, he got up and danced, and then he left. He asked if I wanted to meet with him the next day and get a tour of Paisley Park. I foolishly thought, We’re friends now, so I’ll do it next time. Well, the next time never happened.

Most uncomfortable interview

Oh, Howard Stern. [During their notorious 1993 interview on his E! television show, Stern repeatedly insisted that Vega wear something sluttier.] People seemed to think that I had wandered off the street like a lamb and that I had no idea who he was and that he was just tormenting me. That is not true. Howard Stern and I had been writing to each other, and I’d been on his radio show several times before that TV show. And in between takes, he would turn to me and go, “It’s not too bad, is it? I’m not such a bad guy. Look here. See, I have photos of my daughters.” He would pour on the sugar, saying, “Just let me know if I’m going too far.” And I was like, “Oh, shut up.”

Favorite Suzanne Vega reference in film or TV

There are two that come immediately to mind. One is The Simpsons, Homer Simpson singing “My name is Luka” as he drives under a bridge. Then the other one was the director’s cut of Pulp Fiction. It was amazing to see my name coming out of Uma Thurman’s mouth.

Rudest audience you’ve ever had

It might have been Zagreb in 1990. They were on the verge of a civil war, and we were playing in what was then Yugoslavia. Just walking down the street, you could see the social unrest. It was just chaos. And the audience I found to be a little scary. There were a lot of men in this room backstage, smoking, and I tried to joke with them. I think I said something like, “I’m Suzanne Vega from New York City. That’s in America,” and they thought I was being condescending. They expressed their displeasure with me. And then at the show there were guards between me and the audience, and they kept harassing the audience, telling them to sit down and be quiet. People were shouting. I didn’t like that, so I told the guards to go away. When the audience heard this, people started running up the aisle and coming right up to the stage. They were touching my shoes, offering me cigarettes. Of course, when I started to look at the guards they were like, Too bad.

Favorite Tom’s Diner order

It was always fried eggs over easy with bacon, hash browns, coffee with cream, and whole-wheat toast. It was $2.75. No one at the diner has since ever given me free coffee or anything. There is a picture of me on the menu, though, a very tiny one next to a big one of Jerry Seinfeld. They misspelled my name: “Susan Vega.”