The Pop Corporation

Some songs are famous, but some endure in such a unique way, that they keep asking questions. What exactly is ‘Tom’s Diner’ by Suzanne Vega about? That disassociating voice, that beat, the “doo doo doo” bit that’ll earworm you from the minute you first hear it?

Vega had already had a worldwide hit with the magnificent ‘Luka’, which was all about the juxtaposition between the achingly sweet sound and the tender gloom of the lyrical content, offering an arm around a child that was being abused.

Vega was in part, the artist more than anyone who restarted singer-songwriter music in the ’80s alongside Tracy Chapman, in a decade more concerned with maximalist pop and electronic music.

What was so interesting about Suzanne Vega, is that instead of the usual crop of Greenwich Village folk club influences, you could hear the echoes of Lou Reed in her voice and the way in which she wrote. He delivery is cool and purposeful, and at times, weary and detached. Patti Smith cohort Lenny Kaye was another connection, showing Vega to be someone far from the twee balladeers of the folk scene, and someone wrestling with realities and a inner monologue style that was more engaging. Vega didn’t sound like a hippie or some 70s throwback – she was different.

In her music, you can hear a variety of influences, from Astrud Gilberto, to XTC, to Tomita, to soul music, to Todd Rundgren, as well as the aforementioned Smith and Reed. With ‘Luka’, the distance between the jangly pop and the dark subject matter, you can most keenly feel the influence of Andy Partridge’s XTC, and it was a deserved hit for the young songwriter.

It was a fertile period, and Vega would be surrounded by Melissa Etheridge, Sarah McLachlan, Edie Brickell and her New Bohemians, Chapman and her sometime backup singer Shawn Colvin, and others.

How do you follow a hit like ‘Luka’? Vega had ‘Tom’s Diner’ in the bag – almost a tone poem about Tom’s Restaurant in Manhattan, New York City.

I am sitting in the morning
At the diner on the corner
I am waiting at the counter
For the man to pour the coffee
And he fills it only halfway
And before I even argue
He is looking out the window
At somebody coming in

We’re told of the ringing of bells of the nearby St. John the Divine cathedral, a train that needs catching, a rainy morning, and a newspaper of “a story of an actor who had died while he was drinking”, which was a front page story of 50s Hollywood star William Holden, which allowed sleuths to date the precise day when Vega wrote the song – November 16th, 1981.

Vega has said she wrote the song based on a comment by photographer Brian Rose, who said that when working, he sometimes felt as if “he saw his whole life through a pane of glass”, which led Vega to trying to write a song in that style while sitting in Tom’s Restaurant.

The track would be the follow up single from her ‘Solitude Standing’ LP, and to pop fans, sounds markedly different from the version most think of.

Vega’s version is a bold choice – an unusual, arresting acappella, cementing her place as one of the most unique voices of the decade.

Then, two things happened outside of Vega’s control, that would make ‘Tom’s Diner’ one of the most influential songs of it’s generation.

German electrical engineer and mathematician Karlheinz Brandenburg was developing a new audio tool, which would compress a track to small amounts of data, while trying to retain some audio quality. This scheme would become the MP3.

Brandenburg said: “I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm…somewhere down the corridor, a radio was playing ‘Tom’s Diner.’ I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a cappella voice.”

Brandenburg had managed to successfully compress other tracks, but the stark and warm ‘Tom’s Diner’ was his Everest, and he wouldn’t rest until he managed to refine the tool until the subtleties in Vega’s voice sounded good. Once that was achieved, soon enough, Vega was being dubbed ‘The Mother of the MP3’.

It was the fact that Vega had released such a powerfully delicate track that saw another avenue open. Two English producers by the name of DNA decided to put a beat to Vega’s song, and it would be her second smash.

Vega recalls: “I heard that two young English guys called DNA had put a beat to it – and I cringed. I’d just had a big hit with “Luka”, which – unfortunately, despite its dark subject matter, child abuse – lent itself to all sorts of parodies and covers, most of which I hated. I feared more of the same, but to my great relief I loved what DNA had done. I thought it would be played in a few dance clubs and that would be it, but it surpassed everyone’s expectations. I even got a plaque for it being one of the most played R&B songs – funny for a folk singer.”

What’s key here, is that the remixes such as this were usually met with legal action and resistence from artists. However, Vega and her label were forward thinking enough to embrace this new version. Given Suzanne’s broad taste in music, rather than being some conservative folkie, she was able to facilitate an official collaboration and release of the DNA version, which is the version of the song that crossed so many genres and boundaries.

Instead of being some tedious footnote about copyright infringement, pitting the trad musicians against the dance music kids, a white label became a global smash.

Ever honest, Vega said: “My label asked me what I thought of it and I told them it was really kind of nice. So I said, ‘Go ahead and release it.’ I wasn’t expecting it to be successful—I never thought it would be that popular. It just seemed very charming.”

The DNA version would chart highly on the Billboard charts, the UK Top 10, European charts, as well as rock, dance and R&B charts, becoming a runaway success that would take on such a life of its own, that it would end up being covered by Giorgio Moroder with Britney Spears, and sampled by the likes of Public Enemy, 2Pac, Lil Kim, and interpolated by Fall Out Boy, and Benny Blanco.

That the song itself is originally a slice of disassociated reportage written when Vega was a student at nearby Barnard College about a dead Hollywood actor and an under-poured coffee, a poem about alienation, it’s testament to Vega’s ability to keep her vision so clear, that it allowed for all these other things to spontaneously happen around her.

From a woman who performed in a bulletproof vest at Glastonbury after receiving death threats, to folkie who still liked to listen to pop music, Vega’s influence over music is massive, even if there’s a lot of people who haven’t realised it – the spearheading of the official remix, to revitalising singer songwriter music, to audio technology – and all because the shadow of those simple doo doo doos are so far reaching.