Suzanne Vega
New York neo-folk pioneer By Jim AllenMore than just another Village folkie.
The emergence of Suzanne Vega in the mid-‘80s went a long way towards dispelling the image of acoustic guitar-strumming troubadours as mawkish, wimpy, James Taylor wannabes. Coming out of the NYC singer/songwriter scene based around Greenwich Village club The Speakeasy, her music was informed as much by the street-savvy rock and roll of Lou Reed and the conceptual avant-gardisms of Laurie Anderson as anything else. Her self-titled 1985 debut’s combination of winning melodicism, a cool, vibratoless vocal style, and perfectly pinpointed minimalist songpoems made her a star, eventually inspiring legions of imitators. Her next couple of albums took a more rock-oriented direction, but 1992’s 99.9F° was a milestone that found Vega incorporating electro-dance textures via new producer/future husband Mitchell Froom. Eventually, both her newfound sound and her relationship with Froom fell by the wayside, and Vega returned to more organic folk-rock climes.
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