In 1989, Suzanne Vega became the first woman to headline Glastonbury – but the circumstances were extremely bizarre. The bass player in Vega’s band had a stalker; the latest death threats came on the morning of the gig.
“But they had included me in the threats,” Vega says. “Scotland Yard sat me down and said, ‘We advise you not to do the show.’ I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
Vega eventually performed in a bulletproof vest. “A man from Scotland Yard took his and said, ‘You’ll have to wear this.’ He was twice my size, so I had to gaffer tape myself into this giant bulletproof vest, and then put a denim jacket over it. It felt like every song was 20 minutes long. It was not comfortable. We were all nervous.” For all that, it was a success. “I’m proud of being the first woman to headline. There’s nothing diminished about that.”
A native New Yorker who honed her craft among the purist early 80s neo-folk scene in Greenwich Village, by the time of that Glastonbury show, Vega’s observant, self-contained folk-pop was selling millions. Her 1985 eponymous debut – with breakthrough hit “Marlene on the Wall” – and its 1987 follow-up, Solitude Standing, proved a sharp, welcome contrast to the brash pop of contemporaries Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.
Her most famous songs showcased a memorable knack for melody and distinct narrative empathy: “Luka”, her 1987 hit, was written from the perspective of an abused child. “Tom’s Diner”, Solitude Standing’s a capella opening track (later used to test compression during the design of MP3s) became Vega’s global signature after its 1990 remix by production duo DNA.
Vega had no prior knowledge of the remix and once made aware, her record label wanted to sue. “But I listened to it and thought, ‘Wow, this is really cool’.” She made the very smart decision to buy the rights to the track. “I was expecting it to play in dance clubs, and I thought that’d be the end of it.” But it became a hit everywhere, and has since been covered and sampled by dozens of artists, from Britney Spears to 2Pac.
It did lead to some confusion though. “Sometimes people come to the show expecting a whole show of R&B,” she smiles. “Or people would buy Solitude Standing expecting the remix.” But Vega enjoyed her popstar years. “It was exciting. I liked being successful. Whether you like my music or not, you could not deny that I was successful,” she says. “I felt good about that.”
Now 65, Vega is a measured yet friendly presence on video call from her home study on Madison Avenue. We speak on the day she’s releasing her classic-sounding 10th album, the vibrant, stylistically varied Flying with Angels, which ranges from folk-pop to soft-rock to “Rats”, a punk-ish song influenced by Ramones (“I always felt a bit of a kinship with them, which maybe people don’t see automatically”) and Irish post-punk band Fontaines DC, who she discovered via her manager during a road trip.
“Rats” was inspired by newspaper reports of rodents running riot in New York during the pandemic, but it reminded Vega of her own upbringing in run-down Spanish Harlem. “I personally have been acquainted with rats since I was very young, because I grew up in all the bad neighbourhoods in New York.”
Vega had drinks with friends last night to celebrate an album full of “songs of struggle” – she had actually considered calling the album Survival of the Fittest. “But then if you call your tour that it sounds ominous or like a game show. So Flying with Angels just felt to me like we need this now. We need protection. We need guidance.”
Flying with Angels is Vega’s first album of original material since 2014. Vega had been immersed in what she calls “the theatre world”, working on three adaptations and eventually a film version of her one-woman play about American writer Carson McCullers, Carson McCullers Talks About Love, but decided to “get back to what I do best”. That was November 2019 – yet Covid had other ideas.
Vega was too anxious to write during the pandemic: her husband of 19 years, Paul Mills, has underlying health conditions. “So we knew if he got Covid it could be very serious. He did get Covid, and it was very serious.” Mills has since suffered three strokes that left him learning to speak again. “The irony is that he was a First Amendment lawyer whose specialty was free speech. He defended a lot of protesters from Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. So at the very moment when we need this here in America, he was suddenly silenced.”
It has been an understandably difficult period. “I get a lot of comfort from the support groups on Facebook. I lurk mostly, but I see people’s stories, and I’m really deeply moved by them.”
Opening track “Speaker’s Corner” mixes Vega’s personal situation with the political. By the third verse, Vega is singing in support of free speech as a principle. Vega is a liberal-minded Democrat – “but I have to say, it’s not just one party. Most people know what I’m talking about when they hear the song”. Vega expresses disbelief and dismay over Trump’s election and “what those men are doing” with their DOGE agenda – “but I think misinformation is really bad no matter where it comes from”.
Other songs are personal in a more surreal way. “Chambermaid” came from a dream. “I woke up one morning and I thought: ‘I am Bob Dylan’s chambermaid’,” she says. In Dylan’s 1966 song “I Want You”, he has a conversation with a maid cleaning his hotel room. “I thought, ‘If I were Dylan’s chambermaid, what would I say?’ So I wanted to explore her world, her thoughts, her ambitions.”
She says such dreams aren’t unusual. “I dream of certain people frequently. I dream about Bob Dylan. I used to dream about Sinead O’Connor back in the 90s. I dream about Lou Reed a lot. I don’t know why these people show up in my dreams, but I know there’s some sort of communion going on there.”
Vega became friends with Reed; two New York institutions reflecting different aspects of the city. The Velvet Underground singer was Vega’s first gig in 1979 – “he was throwing lit cigarettes into the crowd, it was pretty nasty” – but they became close over the years. “He could be difficult,” she says (Reed’s belligerence was legendary), “but also vulnerable. I miss him. So I sometimes feel his presence. It’s always like, ‘You’re an artist, don’t give up.’ I get that from those dreams.”
Final track “Galway” is an Irish folk waltz – “I think I’m 22 per cent Irish, so somewhere in my psyche there must be that kind of deep connection” – that tells the true story of how a man propositioned Vega to move to Galway and start over. She says it was her first husband, just before she married Mills. “It’s the one that could have been,” she says. “I’m not trying to stir up any trouble. At a certain age, you look back on your choices. I’ve heard that song described as a shaggy-dog story, which I think may have some truth to it. So I feel comfortable with that.”
Vega has been looking back a lot recently. The day before we speak marked the 40th anniversary of her debut album, something of a full circle moment. The anniversary made her think of the low expectations for her debut album from both her label – they thought selling 30,000 in total would be a great result (it sold one million) – and Vega herself. She once said she’d probably be discovered only after she died.
“I had expected to remain underground for most of my life. And it still may happen that I’m discovered after my death,” she smiles. “Emily Dickinson sitting at her desk, what were her thoughts? Now we have schools named after her. So you don’t know. I just prefer to think about what’s going on right now.”
‘Flying with Angels’ is out now. Suzanne Vega will perform on ‘Later…with Jools Holland’ on BBC Two on 1 June and tours the UK from 19 October
