When fans tell Suzanne Vega she was ahead of her time, she doesn’t just take it as a compliment from well-meaning devotees. The 64-year-old singer-songwriter wholeheartedly agrees.
And the characterization tracks.
She did, after all, stand alone on the 1988 Grammy stage in the midst of technicolor ‘80s excess armed with an acoustic guitar and a severe haircut to sing the thrice nominated “Luka,” an unlikely hit about child abuse, paving the way for Tracy Chapman’s stark, solo performance of “Fast Car” a year later. She’s also been dubbed the “Mother of the MP3” for the use of “Tom’s Diner” (the other massive single from her sophomore album, “Solitude Standing,” that kicked off a dance remix revolution with its “da-deh-da-deh” earworm) by German scientists to hone the MP3 algorithm that transformed the way we listen to music even today. And Vega even re-recorded her back catalog for the experimental, four-volume “Close-Up” series in an effort to reshape her material and circumvent her previous label’s ownership of her masters a decade before Taylor Swift revisited her discography breath for breath.
So, 40 years into a fruitful career, are the rest of us finally on an even playing field with Vega?
“No,” she deadpans, over the phone from her dressing room at The Egg in Albany, New York, on the first night of her new tour.
“I think in some ways I’m ahead of my time, but I think that’s also because I’m somewhat anachronistic. I, myself, really love things that are really old, but I also love things that are very modern, and so I think of time as one giant closet that you can rummage around in and pick things from various eras,” she explains. “Which, I think is actually a very modern way of styling anything whether it’s your way of dressing or doing music. With that approach, no one will ever catch up to me.”
A new exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland shines a light on Vega’s unique contributions along with other female artists who “subvert societal norms.” Vega got to attend the opening for “Revolutionary Women in Music: Left of Center,” named after her bouncing addition to the soundtrack for John Hughes’ 1986 classic “Pretty in Pink,” and hang out with pioneering Go-Go’s guitarist Jane Wiedlin and Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson while admiring “exquisitely preserved” costumes from Natalie Merchant’s “Ophelia” period that were “as good as anything you’d see by David Bowie.”
“It was really inspiring to see all these women, all different types of music — loud women, introspective women — of all different eras in one space making a huge racket,” Vega says. “I was proud to be there.”
She stole a moment to grab a selfie with her booth displaying one of the jackety dresses she wore while promoting “Luka,” along with the pair of gloves she donned on the cover “Solitude Standing” and handwritten lyrics from 1990’s “Days of Open Hand.”
When Vega dips into the area with guitarist Gerry Leonard for an April 18 show in Schaumburg at the Prairie Center for the Arts and two nights in Evanston at SPACE on April 24-25, fans won’t have to wait in suspense to see if she’ll dust off “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner.” Their inclusion is a sure thing.
“I might have tried (not playing) it once in like 35 years. They expect it and I like to play it because they expect it,” she admits. “Especially ‘Tom’s Diner.’ It started as a very introspective a cappella song and now it’s turned into this party song where everybody gets up and dances together, so it’s great.”
This spring jaunt promises a mixture of “old songs, new songs and other songs” with an emphasis on new as Vega readies her first studio album of original material in a decade, not counting her collaboration with Duncan Sheik on her one-woman musical play depicting the life of Southern author Carson McCullers.
Leaving behind the ethereal and spiritual themes of 2014’s “Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles,” this not-yet-titled album takes on the COVID-19-scarred world and depicts “where we are in time right now.”
Taking a cue from The Ramones and Irish quintet Fontaines D.C., Vega embraces punk rock on “Rats,” a literal musing on the whiskered vermin running amok in the streets of New York while “Flying with Angels” intimately tackles the emotional and physical labor of caregiving for someone who’s ill. “Speaker’s Corner” probes “the idea that you can just get up on your soapbox and say anything you want to and how that’s operating right now in time.”
As someone who often heard as a kid that she was always “in some other world,” Vega channeled advice she got from Velvet Underground leader and mentor Lou Reed years ago when writing these tunes.
“He heard a couple of my songs and he said, ‘You need to write more real songs.’ Because, of course, that’s what he did. I don’t think there’s a single metaphor in any of his songs, but I like a metaphor now and again,” she counters.
Janine Schaults is a freelance writer.
7:30 p.m. April 18 at the Al Larson Prairie Center for the Arts, 201 Schaumburg Ct., Schaumburg; tickets are $65 at prairiecenter.org. Then 8 p.m. April 24-25 at SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston; (sold out) evanstonspace.com