Stolen from A Ranting Pup, who stole it from Toppertje, who… etc.
Choosing only song names from ONE ARTIST…
Describe yourself: The Queen and The Soldier How do you feel: Left Of Center Describe where you currently live: Room Off The Street If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Ludlow Street Your favorite form of transportation:
Wooden Horse Your best friend is:
Small Blue Thing You and your best friends are:
Neighbourhood Girls What’s the weather like:
Fifty-fifty chance (of rain, of course) What’s your favorite time?
Waterloo Sunset If your life was a tv show, what would it be called:
(If You Were) In My Movie What is life to you:
My Favourite Plum Your current relationship:
Frank & Ava Your fear:
Men In A War What is the best advice you have to give:
(I’ll Never Be) Your Maggie May Thought for the Day:
New York is a Woman How I would like to die:
Unbound My soul’s present condition:
Bound My motto:
When Heroes Go Down… they go down fast (this is the hardest one, as Suzanne Vega doesn’t have very long song titles )
After the disastrously bland “Songs in Red and Gray” was released in 2001 to lukewarm critical reception and barely any sales, I wrote Suzanne Vega off. I thought, that’s it. She lost everything that made her exciting when “Blood Makes Noise” came out and I spent the night playing it on repeat until the tape I recorded it on worn out. She decided to be middle-aged, boring and go on about her divorce. That’s it. She’s never going to release anything better than “99.9F” and “Days of Open Hand”, just millions of compilations and this.
I was wrong.
“Beauty and Crime”, her 2007 record, is my favourite Suzanne Vega album. It is produced by Jimmy Hogarth, who made it sound both very similar to Rupert Hine’s bland work on “Songs” and at the same time strikingly different — Rupert Hine’s production flows effortlessly from one elevator to another, and Jimmy Hogarth’s is rich, exciting and deep while still not really devolving from the MOR folk template Suzanne seems to be comfortable with. But this isn’t an album by a middle-aged woman without many ideas. This is an album by an accomplished artist with many things to say. And for the love of Morrissey, she does say it beautifully.
“Frank & Ava”, the album’s lead single, was an odd choice. It is probably the only track that sounds as if Rupert Hine was passing by the studio. It’s nice, uptempo, radio-friendly and very, very uneventful. But the other songs… “Ludlow Street” has provided me with a motto I’ve been using since hearing it for the first time; “Love is the only thing that matters, love is the only thing that’s real” and when Vega sings the line with that voice of hers, I have tears in my eyes. “Pornographer’s Dream” is Suzanne Vega doing bossanova and singing about naked flesh in a way that makes it obvious she is actually singing about the opposite — naked soul. And “Anniversary” is just breathtaking.
(Forgive me — there is no real video for the song, but this presentation has the original audio.)
(Live version.)
She sung about 9/11 quite a few times by now. “It Hit Home”, the first song she wrote about it, was a bit on the ugh-can’t-believe-she-did-that side of things. There are two on this record; “Angel’s Doorway” (which could have been better if she hasn’t rhymed “destruction” with “introduction” in a way that sort of suggests rhyming dictionary has been used and many four-syllable words ending with -uction tried for size) and “Anniversary”.
“Anniversary” has a chord progression that coupled with Suzanne’s melancholic voice gives me shivers and, again, a lyric that brings me on the verge of tears. It is slightly understated yet monumental as an album closer; it is here that Hogarth shows his genius, having taken a track that started its life as a guitar-and-voice affair on one of the many editions of the “Retrospective” compilation and turned it into one of Suzanne Vega’s best songs. I would have loved for this to be a single complete with a beautiful high-budget video, remixes by Massive Attack and an a cappella for myself to play with.
The fate of “Beauty and Crime” was different. The video for “Frank & Ava” failed to capture the hearts of YouTube viewers. The follow-up promo singles “Ludlow Street” (great choice) and “Unbound” (less great choice) haven’t captured any attention whatsoever. The album reached #129 in the US, #127 in the UK and Blue Note have not renewed their contract with Vega for another record, quietly dropping her in June 2008.
It’s hard not to think most people are twats when this happens. So redeem yourselves at least slightly, play “Anniversary” and then buy the album. Your life will be better if you do so.
My choice is Suzanne Vega’s “Left of center”, which, due to Universal being twats, is not embeddable (click the link to watch). I fell in love with Suzanne Vega when the DNA remix of “Tom’s Diner” came out; I went, bought “Solitude Standing” and discovered it wasn’t like that at all. It was better. I loved her voice, her tunes, her lyrics, the Anton Sanko production (to this day I maintain that “Days of Open Hand”, Sanko’s final effort, is her best produced album).
“Left of center”, a non-album single, features Joe Jackson on the piano. It also precisely describes what I spent most of my life feeling like:
If you want me
You can find me
Left of center
Off of the strip
In the outskirts
In the fringes
In the corner
Out of the grip
And when they ask me
“What are you looking at?”
I always answer
“Nothing much” (not much)
I think they know that
I’m looking at them
I think they think
I must be out of touch
The bridge sounds almost heartbreaking, one of her best vocal performances:
I think that somehow
Somewhere inside of us
We must be similar
If not the same
So I continue
To be wanting you
Left of center
Against the grain
World is so cruel RT @mat_johnson "Is Santa real, daddy?" "No." "Is God?" "No comment." "Are clowns real?" "Yes, son, they are." "Oh shit." 17 hours ago
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