Grammy-award-winning platinum singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega skyrocketed to fame in the 1980s, writing some of that decade's most recognizable songs.
Sold-out dates across the Midwest on Vega’s current tour prove her staying power, fueled not only by a decades-long catalog but also new songs leading up to her first studio LP in 11 years.
A retrospective tour called Old Songs, New Songs and Other Songs stops at the Castle Theatre in Bloomington on March 20. Guitarist Gerry Leonard and cellist Stephanie Winters join Vega for the tour. Leonard is a longtime collaborator whose resume includes other luminaries like David Bowie, Rufus Wainwright and Roger Waters—he also produced Vega's new record.
Among the “new songs” on the tour is the 2024 single, Rats.
“I stayed in New York City and spent a lot of my time reading things like the app Nextdoor and Citizen App—just to find out what was going on,” Vega said in a phone interview. “It was a frightening time. Most people had left, and it was kind of a ghost town.”
Vega read stories about rats patriating spaces typically reserved for their human neighbors, like Barzini’s grocery store on the Upper West Side. In 2023, New York Mayor Eric Adams appointed Kathleen Corradi as the city’s new “rat czar” to combat the surge.
“I’ve lived in some of the poorest neighborhoods in New York,” said Vega, a lifelong New Yorker. “Rats are always a problem, so this struck me as both horrific and funny.”
Nearly all of Vega’s songs have some tie to her home city, captured comprehensively in her last live album, An Evening of New York Songs and Stories, released Sept. 11, 2020. What makes Rats different is its style, a punk-forward, harder-than-usual sound Vega said simply had to be.
“With a subject matter like that, better go punky,” she said. “I couldn’t really see making a tender ballad in A-minor."
It’s a display of confidence and aesthetic curiosity she said comes more easily at this stage of her career. Rats appears alongside an R&B inspired single on the new record, Flying with Angels, which drops May 2 on streaming platforms and physical media.
‘Waves of fashion’
Vega’s career spans some of the music industry’s most pivotal inflection points. She arrived at the height of the big label era, selling 5 million albums in 5 years. One her most popular songs, Tom’s Diner, was a 1982 a cappella homage to the café she frequented while attending Barnard College. The song was memorialized as a club hit when British record producers remixed it with beats from Soul II Soul. It was also used as a test pilot in the development of mp3s, ushering in the digital revolution.
“When I was young and I signed my first record deal I had no idea there were waves of fashion,” said Vega. “I thought there was just a way it was done, end of story. I didn’t realize things would shift and change.”
Early success came with a certain kind of pressure.
“Still, it was great. I wouldn’t change it for anything,” she said. “The second time that felt the most stressful was when the opposite happened. I had a record deal with Blue Note for two years. We won a Grammy and everything, and then I was dropped.”
In 2008, Vega established Amanuensis, following in the footsteps of trailblazing early adopters of self-producing independent labels like Aimee Mann and Ani DiFranco. Mann and Vega had manager Michael Hausman in common, who helped launch Mann’s label, SuperEgo, and Amanuensis. In 2014, Vega re-recorded her catalog in a four-volume set called the Close-Up Series. She re-released the set on vinyl in 2022.
“That has been a very buoyant project,” she said. “That allowed me to come back and earn a living. And now I have control over all of that. You survive because you’re interested in surviving.”
More than Marlene on the Wall
Unlike Taylor Swift, who assumed control of her catalog by re-recording each album note-for-note, the Close-Up Series was compiled by theme in stripped down acoustic arrangements.
“My albums are spread out over time, and we would never be able to recreate the atmosphere of working with Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake—those weird details that they would get,” Vega said. “And then [I] also have a playlist idea with songs listed by mood because I didn’t want people getting stuck in the first two albums. I wanted them to hear I’d been doing new stuff as well.”
Still, Vega doesn’t mind playing those hits like Tom’s Diner, Luka and Marlene on the Wall.
“I like the repetition of telling stories and singing songs,” she said. “Why would I deny the audience the moment of Tom’s Diner? They respond to it with a huge amount of joy. It brings up memories for them. It’s a great moment of chemistry between myself and the audience which I take great pleasure in.”
Suzanne Vega plays Thursday, March 20, at the Castle Theatre, 209 E. Washington St., Bloomington. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $59-$100 at thecastletheatre.com. Flying with Angels drops May 2. Pre-order or pre-save the album at suzannevega.com.
