Introduction

Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there's a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life.

Suzanne Vega to Mark Woodworth in 1998 for Solo: Women Singer-songwriters in Their Words.

In multiple interviews, the award-winning recording artist clarified that she did not initially write songs with the purpose of achieving commercial gain; her trajectory was seemingly more about discovering her voice as a poet and a storyteller, yet success came along just the same.

In 1987, Vega garnered a Grammy for 'Best Female Pop Vocal Performer' for 'Luka'. Four singles: 'Marlene on the Wall,' 'Left of Center,' 'Luka' and 'No Cheap Thrill' saturated the Top 40 charts in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s. With her team, Vega also won awards designated by Billboard, Zebrik, Glamour, Peabody, Drama Desk, NME, ASCAP, Pollstar and MTV.

On the original version of 'Tom's Diner' from 1987 sophomore album, Solitude Standing, Vega rendered the song a cappella, but in 1990, the British duo DNA remixed the track, featuring Vega as lead soloist. In this unexpected incarnation, 'Tom's Diner' claimed a Top 10 position in multiple countries, including Germany, Greece and Switzerland. 99.9.F was proclaimed 'Best Rock Album' in 1993 by New York Music Awards. In 2008, Beauty & Crime was voted 'Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical' by the Recording Academy.

Yet at the core, none of that success, incidental or not, appears to have altered Vega's principles, along her 40-year path. Rather than follow the latest trend, she has vigilantly upheld the sacred craft of storytelling, joining the ranks of screenwriters and novelists, who have created and developed timeless characters.

Furthermore, she has intelligently bridged the gap between artist and audience; Vega and her fans are strongly connected. I see her transparency as a strong factor. We have seen our loneliest, scariest and proudest selves in her bodies of work. There are the intrepid characters that we might love or befriend if given the chance, but even the protagonists that teeter on the edge give purpose to her narratives.

Vega has been compared to Bob Dylan, lyrically, but she in turn, has influenced a variety of successful singer-songwriters (some of whom I will cover), as well. Whether choosing to present material in a contemporary folk, neo-folk or techno-folk fashion, she has fearlessly bucked trends. Some songs rely on the strophic structure, while others are arranged in distinctive sections, yet her often-idiomatic intent consistently shines through. In all aspects, she expresses a voice uniquely her own.

In an interview with the author on 19 June 2015, Vega discussed finding her niche while expanding her thematic range:

I came down to The Village with the idea of playing Gerdes Folk City, where Bob Dylan had gotten his start, and I came down there with my acoustic guitar. So, in some ways, I am a folkie in that old-fashioned sense of standing on stage with my guitar and telling stories and all that.

But even from the very beginning, I had never let that define me or limit me, so that's why I was able to write a song like 'Cracking' because I thought, 'let's do this.' I was influenced by the rock music that I was listening to, by Lou Reed, by New Wave artists and, by some degree, the punks, although I don't shout or scream, but there is a bit of a punk influence in there as well as a minimalist kind of aesthetic. So, I let that all seep in, which is what I think you're supposed to do if you want to be an artist.

She was born in Santa Monica, California to her British biological father, Richard Peck, and biological mother, Pat Schumacher, a German-Swedish computer systems analyst. After their divorce, her family moved to 'Spanish Harlem' and the Upper West Side of New York City.

Her mother remarried. Vega's stepfather, Edgardo Vega Yunque, also known by his pen name, Ed Vega, was a Puerto Rican novelist and short story writer, whose works include the novel, The Comeback, and short stories 'Mendoza's Dreams' and 'Casualty Report'. He was inspired by William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway.

She was the oldest of four children, which also included Tim, Alyson and Matthew Vega. In interviews, she admits that she was a late talker. She didn't mirror the typical toddler by pointing to an object and blurting out 'pie' or 'plane.'

According to her stepfather, when she finally spoke, she didn't use monosyllabic shout-outs - she spoke in metaphors. It was as though she'd made a conscious choice to take note of sights and sounds and wait for the proper moment to share her visions with the world.

That world was colorful, often chaotic and inspirational. To host Kevin Burke on the podcast Your Hometown Virtual Conversation with Suzanne Vega on 22 June 2021, the songwriter discussed a factor that strongly influenced her writing - the multi-culturalism she experienced growing up in New York City proper:

I can't imagine how I'd have written if I had come from a town where everyone was the same demographic; my mother came from the Midwest, and so therefore, it was more of a similar demographic. But in my neighborhoods, it was wildly diverse. In East Harlem, we had mixtures of black, Puerto Rican, Irish. On the upper west side, we had Europeans. We had different ages and every type of point-of-view you could imagine. So, that was important to me, growing up.

She also commented on the art, sculpture, poetry workshops and theater available mere steps away. These artistic happenings fueled her imagination, made her curious about others and contributed to an overall sense of artistic freedom.

Vega has consistently been a keen observer of human behavior. Her 2001 book, The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writing of Suzanne Vega, includes stories, poems and lyrics that only an acutely self-aware individual could create. Although much of the writings originated in her early teens, a handful of early works include a haiku written at age eleven and a poem, By Myself, written at age nine (the same age in which she discovered that Ed Vega was not her biological father).

Despite age discrepancies, a common denominator weaves through these writings, irrespective of the formats. Each lyric, story and poem provide clues to Vega's 'outsider' perspectives and illustrate her innate hunger for self-expression.

In the story, 'The Piano,' for instance, written at age fifteen, Vega zeroes in on the disciplined lives of young dancers. Through dialogue and narrative, she makes us painfully aware of how frequently body imagery judgments come into play in the realm of the performing arts.

In reality, she learned to feel comfortable expressing herself as a dancer, but later, as a guitar-playing performer, she found it challenging to move freely on stage while strumming an instrument or being responsible for switching chord shapes while accompanying herself.

Years later, when Vega performs live, she shows no signs of putting either herself or her audience on a pedestal but has acknowledged in interviews that she is aware of being watched and even scrutinized. She understands that her movements and manner of speaking matter. She strives to communicate through her poetic lyrics and melodies, but she regards herself, and the audience, as separate entities.

Many stories reflected slices of authentic life. Vega was a dance major at New York's highly competitive Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts, which loosely provided the dramatic inspiration for the 1980 American film, Fame. This rigorous high school closed in 1984 and included alumni such as Liza Minelli and Eartha Kit, among others.

Vega then attended Barnard College, an all-women school situated across from Columbia University in Morningside Heights, where she graduated with a degree in English, while concurrently expanding her interest in music. In fact, what had attracted her to the discipline of dance in the first place was actually the music; the wildfire behind the beats.

It was a busy four years. She worked concurrently as a receptionist and graduated with the Class of 1982. The Mortarboard Yearbook from the digitalcollections.barnard.edu of 1981 reveals a black-and-white image of a serious student with then-shoulder-length hair.

Vega returned with musician Laurie Anderson, Class of 1969, and comedian Joan Rivers, Class of 1954, for the 'Barnard Performs' benefit at Carnegie Hall in commemoration of their centennial on 8 February 1989. In another archival photo, Vega stands at the end of a lineup applauding; she's dressed in a tailored dress, dark tights and stylish black boots.

For her undergraduate thesis, she combined her passion for literature and music by composing several songs inspired by Southern author Carson McCullers's short stories which she developed into an original one-act play. This admiration for McCullers's body of work never waned, and Vega later, as shall be seen, developed the project with...