Suzanne Vega’s three favourite songs by her three favourite songwriters: “I love it”
One of the most intriguing artists ever to come from contemporary folk’s second revival is singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega.
‘Revival’ is perhaps a stretch, and ‘folk’ is far too limiting to fully encompass Vega’s multi-dimensional sound. However, the faint echoes of Greenwich Village’s original folk scene indeed appeared to rear its head across the 1980s, propelling the likes of Shawn Colvin to major label fame while also fermenting the anti-folk scene simmering away in the East Village’s underground.
Vega found herself somewhere in the middle. Shaped by a new generation of urban lyrical reportage, yet always in touching distance of a strange pop accessibility underneath her terse and introspective songcraft, Vega would find swift acclaim from 1985’s eponymous debut, artfully melding her folk compositions with rich coatings of keyboards and atmospheric production that hasn’t dented its age 40 years later. Before long, songs like ‘Marlene on the Wall’ and ‘Luka’ would push Vega to one of the celebrated songwriters of the day.
Naturally, for someone boasting a voluminous songbook across ten studio albums, it’s always interesting to peer into such an artist’s inner pantheon of much-loved songs and glean the standards that have impacted their lyrical pen the most. Such an insight was revealed when selecting three songs from her three favourite songwriters for an American Songwriter feature.
First up was Leonard Cohen’s ‘Story of Isaac’. A reflective acoustic number, wielding the biblical Abrahamic tale as an analogy of generational sacrifice, such a fierce lens that Cohen pours his contemplative poetry has long stuck its hook in Vega. “It’s so mysterious, and such a great story,” she said. “The way he tells it is really great: I love the point of view. It’s a song you could sing for years and still not understand all of it, especially the ending verses. There are these ambiguous things in the song, but at the same time, it’s a very dramatic story. The way he’s framed it from the boy’s point of view was really powerful.”
From Cohen’s mortal musings to a more slyly acerbic songsmith, Vega reaches into the earliest offerings from Los Angeles’ Randy Newman, long before his biting satire had truly sharpened his lyrical tongue.
Taken from his 1968 debut, but already recorded by Julius La Rosa and Eric Burdon, ‘I Think It’s Going to Rain Today’ casts a down and outer as only Newman can write, reflecting on the beat-up sorrow colouring his fragile mood. “I love the tone and the imagery of it, both the music and the lyrics. It seemed like a really sad and melancholy song – without being sentimental. Kind of sad but dry at the same time.”
Lastly, Vega looks to the original Green Village folk icon. A favourite of many a fan of old troubadour, Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ from 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home contains his ever-dense, knotty lyrical pangs of political seethe and existential crisis. Full of mystery, from the exact nature of “Ma” to what fraught road the weary narrator’s been dragged through, Vega has always found that such ambiguity only elevates Dylan’s immortal howl of dissolution.
“A song of recent experience, written by a young person in their twenties, not someone with the wisdom of maturity, but with the outrage of youth,” Vega puts it to Stereogum in 2021. “Then there are the constant ironic reassurances ending with ‘It’s alright, Ma. It’s life and life only.’ A very bitterly satisfying song to sing, a careening journey through Bob Dylan’s mind as he catalogues the hypocrisies we take for granted when we get older. I love it.”
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