Suzanne Vega

Suzanne Vega (2014)

Suzanne Nadine Vega (born July 11, 1959 in Santa Monica , California ) is an American singer and songwriter .

Career

Suzanne Vega was born in Santa Monica, California. A year after she was born, her mother moved with her to New York , where Vega grew up in East Harlem and on the Upper West Side . She started writing poetry at the age of nine; she wrote her first song when she was 14 years old. First, she attended La Guardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts , where she studied modern dance. However, she realized that music was her calling. When she at Barnard College of Columbia University English Literature studied, she performed on small stages in the New York art district Greenwich Village on. In 1984 she got her first record deal.

Career

Vega mostly writes music for her guitar . In production, the songs are arranged for a multi-piece band.

From 1985

The 1985 debut album Suzanne Vega was extremely well received. The songs counter the “Bigger is better” motto in the mid-1980s. However, they are not typical protest songs, but rather introspective .

The follow-up album Solitude Standing , released in 1987, contains two songs that made Suzanne Vega known to a wider public: Tom's Diner , a song about Tom's Restaurant , also known through the adaptation of the group DNA and the fact that it was the first song ever in the MP3 format has been converted, and Luka , a song that was written from the perspective of an abused child. Compared to their first album, the music is more oriented towards rock music .

Since 1990

The third album Days of Open Hand from 1990 is a self-contained work. Music and text are carried by mystical symbolism and deep emotions. The music is more experimental compared to the previous albums.

In 1992, 99.9 ° F was released. The album consists of a mix of acoustic folk and songs that move between dance beats and industrial noise .

Album number five, Nine Objects of Desire, was released in 1996. Musically, Vega varied the earlier, simpler style with the more extensive production of 99.9F ° as well as bossa nova .

From 2001 onwards

Suzanne Vega 2008 in Barcelona

In September 2001 her album Songs was released in Red and Gray . As an expression of their experiences, the relationship between men and women, especially their misinterpretations and failure, came to the fore. Musically, Vega concentrated more on acoustic elements again. At the same time, she formulated a higher claim than just producing an uncomplicated folk album.

In 2007, Beauty & Crime was released , the first album released on the Blue Note Records label.

From 2010

On February 9, 2010 her album Close-Up Vol. 1, Love Songs (worldwide release date June 14, 2010) was released in the USA on her own label “ Amanuensis Productions”. It contains new recordings of existing songs on the subject of "love". By 2012, four albums with new recordings had been released, the second part on the subject of “People, Places and Things”, the third part on the “State of being” and the last part with “Family songs”. The idea behind it is, on the one hand, to keep the songs available (since she doesn't have a record deal) and, on the other hand, to have at least one version of your own songs if you don't have the original recordings. The new recordings are acoustic versions of the songs.

In 2011, Vega devoted herself primarily to her play Carson McCullers talks about love , a fictional autobiography with specially arranged songs by the writer Carson McCullers , which premiered in New York in April 2011 with Vega in the lead role.

Since 2014

Suzanne Vega with Gerry Leonard , 2016

After a seven-year hiatus, Suzanne Vega released a studio album with ten new songs in February 2014. The album is titled Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles and was produced by guitarist Gerry Leonard . Until the middle of the year Vega was on a world tour in Europe, the USA, Asia and Australia. In 2016, Suzanne Vega came to Germany for a few gigs.

meaning

Although Suzanne Vegas' commercial success waned from the mid-1990s, some of her songs like Tom's Diner and Luka shaped the musical face of the early decade. The music press took her success at the end of the eighties as an opportunity to compare her with the musicians Tanita Tikaram , Tracy Chapman and Michelle Shocked, who are also strongly song-oriented . The simultaneous success brought more feminist impulses into rock music and contributed to improving the position of women in the rock business.

"The mother of MP3"

The MP3 -Forscherteam to Karlheinz Brandenburg made the first practical tests with the a cappella version of the song Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega. In his search for suitable test material, Brandenburg read in a hi-fi magazine that their testers were using the song to assess loudspeakers and found the piece to be a suitable challenge for audio data compression . Tom's Diner , a song about a small restaurant in New York, became the world's first song in MP3 format - and Suzanne Vega became the “mother of mp3”.

Personal

Suzanne Vega with a Peabody Award (2004)

Suzanne Vega separated in 1998 after three years of marriage from her husband Mitchell Froom, the father of their daughter Ruby, who was born in 1994. She switched manager and record label and devoted herself to her first book, The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writing of Suzanne Vega . In 2006 she married the lawyer Paul Mills, with whom she lives in New York.

Awards (selection)

• 1988: MTV Video Music Awards , Best Female Video for Luka
• 1991: Grammy in the Best Album Package category for Days of Open Hand
• 2008: Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Non Classical for Beauty & Crime
• 2011: NY Music Awards , Best Pop / Rock Compilation for Close Up Volumes 1 & 2

Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1985	Suzanne Vega	DE54 (8 weeks) DE	-	-	UK11 platinum (71 weeks)UK	US91 (31 weeks) US	First published: May 1985
1987	Solitude standing	DE6th gold (38 weeks)DE	AT3 (28 weeks) AT	CH8 (18 weeks) CH	UK2 platinum (39 weeks)UK	US11 platinum (32 weeks)US	First published: April 1987
1990	Days of Open Hand	DE16 (14 weeks) DE	AT9 (10 weeks) AT	CH19 (5 weeks) CH	UK7th silver (7 weeks)UK	US50 (13 weeks) US	First published: April 10, 1990
1992	99.9F °	DE27 (11 weeks) DE	-	CH24 (6 weeks) CH	UK20th silver (4 weeks)UK	US86 gold (21 weeks)US	First published: September 8, 1992
1996	Nine Objects of Desire	DE43 (6 weeks) DE	AT25 (7 weeks) AT	CH23 (7 weeks) CH	UK43 (4 weeks) UK	US92 (5 weeks) US	First published: September 10, 1996
2001	Songs in Red and Gray	DE53 (2 weeks) DE	-	CH47 (5 weeks) CH	UK100 (1 week) UK	US178 (1 week) US	First published: September 25, 2001
2007	Beauty & Crime	DE81 (2 weeks) DE	-	CH79 (3 weeks) CH	-	US129 (1 week) US	First published: June 11, 2007
2014	Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles	DE38 (3 weeks) DE	AT66 (1 week) AT	-	UK37 (1 week) UK	US173 (1 week) US	First published: January 31, 2014
2016	Lover, Beloved: Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers	-	-	-	-	-	First published: October 14, 2016

Compilations

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1998	Tried & True: The Best of	DE58 (4 weeks) DE	-	CH29 (3 weeks) CH	UK46 silver (4 weeks)UK	-	First published: October 1998
2003	Retrospective: The Best of	-	-	-	UK27 gold (6 weeks)UK	-	First published: July 2003

More albums

• 2010: Close-Up Vol. 1, Love Songs
• 2010: Close-Up Vol. 2, People & Places
• 2011: Close-Up Vol. 3, States of Being
• 2012: Close-Up Vol. 4, Songs of Family
• 2012: Live In Germany 1989
• 2012: Live at The Barbican

Singles

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1985	Marlene On The Wall Suzanne Vega	-	-	-	UK21 (13 weeks) UK	-	First published: October 1985
	Small Blue Thing Suzanne Vega	-	-	-	UK65 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: December 1985
1986	Left Of Center Pretty in Pink (OST)	-	-	-	UK32 (12 weeks) UK	-	First published: May 1986 with Joe Jackson
	Gypsy Solitude Standing	-	-	-	UK77 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: October 1986
1987	Tom's Diner Solitude Standing / Taste This	DE1 gold (26 weeks)DE	AT1 (14 weeks) AT	CH1 (22 weeks) CH	UK2 silver (13 weeks)UK	US5 gold (21 weeks)US	First published: April 1987 with DNA
	Luka Solitude Standing	-	AT9 (10 weeks) AT	-	UK23 (8 weeks) UK	US3 (19 weeks) US	First published: May 1987
	Solitude Standing Solitude Standing	-	-	-	UK79 (2 weeks) UK	US94 (3 weeks) US	First published: August 1987
1990	Book Of Dreams Days of Open Hand	-	-	-	UK66 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: April 1990
1992	In Liverpool 99.9F °	-	-	-	UK52 (2 weeks) UK	-	First published: August 1992
	99.9F ° 99.9F °	-	-	-	UK46 (2 weeks) UK	-	First published: October 1992
	Blood Makes Noise 99.9F °	-	-	-	UK60 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: December 1992
1993	When Heroes Go Down 99.9F °	-	-	-	UK58 (1 week) UK	-	First published: February 1993
1997	No Cheap Thrill Nine Objects of Desire	-	-	-	UK40 (2 weeks) UK	-	First published: February 1997

Awards for music sales

Golden record  Germany 2018: for the author participation Centuries ( Fall Out Boy )  Italy 2016: for the author participation Centuries (Fall Out Boy)  New Zealand 1987: for the album Suzanne Vega  Spain 1988: for the album Solitude Standing 2 × gold record  France 1990: for the album Solitude Standing

Platinum record  Canada 1987: for the album Solitude Standing  New Zealand 1987: for the album Solitude Standing  Sweden 2015: for the author participation Centuries (Fall Out Boy)  United Kingdom 2018: for the author participation Centuries (Fall Out Boy) 4 × platinum record  United States 2015: for the author participation Centuries (Fall Out Boy)

Note: Awards in countries from the chart tables or chart boxes can be found in these.

Country / Region	silver	gold	platinum	Sales	swell
Awards for music sales (country / region, awards, sales, sources)
Germany (BVMI)	-	3 × gold3	-	700,000	musikindustrie.de
France (SNEP)	-	2 × gold2	-	200,000	infodisc.fr
Italy (FIMI)	-	gold1	-	25,000	fimi.it
Canada (MC)	-	-	platinum1	100,000	musiccanada.com
New Zealand (RMNZ)	-	gold1	platinum1	22,500	nztop40.co.nz
Sweden (IFPI)	-	-	platinum1	40,000	sverigetopplistan.se
Spain (Promusicae)	-	gold1	-	50,000	Sólo éxitos: año año, 1959-2002
United States (RIAA)	-	2 × gold2	5 × platinum5	6,000,000	riaa.com
United Kingdom (BPI)	4 × silver4th	gold1	3 × platinum3	1,680,000	bpi.co.uk
All in all	4 × silver4th	11 × gold11	11 × platinum11

bibliography

• The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writing of Suzanne Vega . Second edition, Harper, New York, NY 2001 (first edition 1999), ISBN 978-0-380-78882-8 .

Web links

Commons : Suzanne Vega  - Collection of Images

• Official Homepage (English)
• Suzanne Vega on MusicBrainz (English)
• Suzanne Vega at laut.de
• Suzanne Vega at Discogs (English)
• Further links on the subject of Suzanne Vega in the Open Music Project - MusicMoz (English)
• Works by and about Suzanne Vega in the catalog of the German National Library
• “Suzanne Vega: The Brittle Singer” , Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , August 12, 2007, report
• Awards and nominations on metrolyrics.com
• Awards and nominations on examiner.com

swell

1. ↑ Carrie Havranek: Women Icons of Popular Music: The Rebels, Rockers, and Renegades . Westport CT, Greenwood Press 2009. ISBN 978-0-313-34083-3 , p. 462
2. ↑ Suzanne Vega meets MP3 developer - report on heise.de from August 4, 2007
3. ↑ Suzanne Vega Close-Up Vol. 1 Love Songs Available Worldwide June 14th!
4. ↑ Suzanne Vega, Musician ( Memento of the original from March 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ^ "Taking Names" in the "New Yorker" (from February 15, 2010)
6. ↑ Suzanne Vega's First New Album in 7 Years Out This February (accessed December 13, 2013)
7. ↑ Many hi-fi fans can apparently hear the grass grow. Interview with the "MP3 inventor" Karlheinz Brandenburg on Tagesanzeiger.ch , accessed on January 20, 2015.
8. ↑ Podcast "Green Luck": Suzanne Vega on her role as the "mother of mp3" (Flash required)
9. ↑ ^{a b c} Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US