Suzanne Vega

Suzanne Nadine Vega ( Peck; born July 11, 1959) is an American singer-songwriter of folk-inspired music.

Vega's music career spans almost 40 years.

Suzanne Nadine Vega was born on July 11, 1959, in Santa Monica, California.

Her parents divorced soon after her birth.

Her mother, Pat Vega (née Schumacher), is a computer systems analyst of German-Swedish heritage.

Her father, Richard Peck, is of English, Irish and Scottish origin.

Her stepfather, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, also known as Ed Vega, was a writer and teacher from Puerto Rico.

When Vega was two and a half, her family moved to New York City.

She grew up in Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side.

She was not aware that Peck was her biological father until she was nine years old.

Vega and Peck met for the first time in her late 20s, and they remain in contact.

She attended the High School of Performing Arts (since renamed Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School) where she studied modern dance and graduated in 1977.

While majoring in English literature at Barnard College, she performed in small venues in Greenwich Village, where she was a regular contributor to Jack Hardy's Monday night songwriters' group at the Cornelia Street Cafe and had some of her first songs published on Fast Folk anthology albums.

In the mid-1980s and 1990s she released four singles that entered the Top 40 charts in the UK, "Marlene on the Wall", "Left of Center", "Luka" and "No Cheap Thrill".

In 1984, she received a major label recording contract, making her one of the first 'Fast Folk' artists to break out on a major label.

Vega's self-titled debut studio album was released in 1985 and was well received by critics in the U.S.; it reached platinum status in the United Kingdom.

Produced by Lenny Kaye and Steve Addabbo, the songs feature Vega's acoustic guitar in straightforward arrangements.

A video was released for the album's song "Marlene on the Wall", which went into MTV and VH1's rotations.

During this period Vega also wrote lyrics for two songs ("Lightning" and "Freezing") on Songs from Liquid Days (1986) by composer Philip Glass.

Vega's song "Left of Center" co-written with Steve Addabbo for the 1986 John Hughes film Pretty in Pink reached No. 32 on the UK Singles Chart in 1986.

"Tom's Diner", which was originally released as an a cappella recording on Vega's second studio album, Solitude Standing (1987), was remixed in 1990 as a dance track by English electronic duo DNA with Vega as featured artist, and it became a Top 10 hit in five countries.

The original a cappella recording of the song was used as a test during the creation of the MP3 format.

The role of her song in the development of the MP3 compression prompted Vega to be given the title of "The Mother of the MP3".

Her next studio album, Solitude Standing (1987), garnered critical and commercial success, selling over one million copies in the U.S. It includes the international hit single "Luka", which is written about, and from the point of view of, an abused child.

(Not until many years later did Vega reveal the song dealt with the abuse she herself had suffered from her stepfather. ) While continuing a focus on Vega's acoustic guitar, the music of her second album is more strongly pop-oriented and features fuller arrangements.

Following the success of the album, in 1989 Vega almost became the first female artist to headline the Glastonbury Festival.

Female fronted UK band "All About Eve" headlined on Friday night due to a short notice headline switch.

Vega performed her set whilst wearing a bulletproof vest, her band having received death threats from an obsessed fan ahead of the festival.

The a cappella "Tom's Diner" from Solitude Standing became a hit in 1990, having been remixed by two British dance producers under the name DNA.

The track was originally a bootleg, until Vega allowed DNA to release it through her record company, and it became her biggest hit.

Vega's third studio album, Days of Open Hand (1990), continued in the style of her first two studio albums.

In 1992, she released her fourth studio album.

It consists of a mixture of folk music, dance beats and industrial music.

This record was awarded Gold status by the RIAA in recognition of selling over 500,000 copies in the U.S. The single "Blood Makes Noise" from this album peaked at number-one on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks.

Vega later married the album's producer Mitchell Froom.

Her fifth studio album, Nine Objects of Desire, was released in 1996.

The music varies between a frugal, simple style and the industrial production of.

This album contains "Caramel", featured in the movie The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), and later the trailer for the movie Closer (2004).

A song not included on that album, "Woman on the Tier", was featured on the soundtrack of the movie Dead Man Walking (1996).

Vega has released nine studio albums to date, the most recent being 2016’s Lover, Beloved: Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers.