Suzanne Vega

Born in California, Suzanne Vega was mostly brought up in the Spanish Harlem district of New York by her German-Swedish mother and her Puerto Rican father. Vega was 14 when she started writing songs, studying modern dance and began performing in small bars in Greenwich Village. She released her self-titled debut album in 1985 - produced by Lenny Kaye - and her moving songs and sensitive performances made a big impact on the back of the hit single 'Marlene On the Wall'. Two years later, her second album 'Solitude Standing' did even better, catching public imagination with the unaccompanied track 'Tom's Diner' and 'Luka', a brave song which tackled child abuse. Her career had another big lift in 1990 when two British producers working under the umbrella name of DNA remixed 'Tom's Diner' as a dance track which, originally a bootleg, went on to become Vega's biggest hit and introduced her to an entirely new audience. More albums followed with varied success, including 'Days of Open Hand' (1990), '99.9F' (1992), 'Nine Objects of Desire' (1996), 'Songs in Red and Gray' (2001), 'Beauty & Crime' (2007) and 'Close-Up Vol. 1 and 2' (2010). In 2016 she released her ninth album, based on the play Carson McCullers 'Talks Above Love', titled 'Lover, Beloved: Songs from an Evening With Carson McCullers'.

Please enable Javascript to view this page competely.