Suzanne Vega

Every song sounds about the same. It's not bad, just missing something that would take it to the next level.

ou, foi bem melhorzinho do que achei que seria
definitivamente voz e violão é mei cansado. mas não foi ruim não, foi até agradável. fiquei surpreso.

Strong singer-song writery pop.

Better than Coldplay

It's very wordy, sometimes to the detriment of the melodies, but Marlene on the Wall is a tune.

There’s something very quiet and understated about this album that I really like. The arrangements are simple, the songwriting is strong, and Suzanne Vega’s voice gives the whole thing its character. It’s very flat and restrained, almost like she’s speaking rather than singing, but somehow that makes the songs feel more personal instead of less expressive.

The album never tries too hard to impress you, which is probably why it works. It just settles into its own mood and stays there. Not every track sticks with me, but the overall atmosphere is strong enough that I kept enjoying it anyway.

Kan egentlig godt lide Suzanne Vega, men jeg har ikke hørt dette album før.
Det er jo lidt en stil, og hun har lidt en lyd, og jeg kan sagtens forstå, hvis man synes, det er kedeligt. Det synes jeg personligt selv, at dette album er. Fint, men kedeligt.

Hvis man har fået det mindste ud af det, og ikke kender hendes andet på forhånd, så vil jeg anbefale Solitude Standing :)

Dette får:

2.8

Might just be a huge hidden gem. I need relistens though. Atmosphere was epic, so was bass.

The reason why she basically just talks throughout most of this is that whenever she tries to sing a melody she's woefully off-key. As for the music, it's a chilling precursor to all the shit pop were swamped with now.

1.0/5.0: Embarrassing

one or two decent tracks but mostly her talking over boring instrumentation

its a good album, however the tracks were pretty similar from my perspective

Denne plata vokste på meg

3.5

A couple of good songs with strong songwriting (Marlene On The Wall, The Queen And The Soldier) whereas the rest tends to blend into the background a bit. Could do with a bit more varied instrumentation (which she did later in her career) to make some of the other songs stand out a bit more. However, I do like her vocals and it's not an unpleasant way to spend 36 minutes.

I gave Adele a 3, so I can't give Suzanne less than that :-(

So it's a 3 (I'm more of a Solitude Standing kind of guy :-D )

Someone else has said this music has horse girl vibes and yeah, it really does.

She has the intensity that a lot of the 70's singer songwriters lack, but I felt myself getting really bored as the album progressed. Needs a bit more kate bush whimsy for me.

The vibe of the album is like, it's 1999 and you're 16 and you're going to your girlfriend's house to meet her parents for the first time. At some point her turtleneck-wearing dad corners you in the living room and you make the mistake of casting a glance in the direction of his CD tower. Then he spends the next 20 minutes explaining why this album is so great and he's thinking he is coming across as cool and hip and you just want to get the hell out of there. Oh no, he's about to go off on a tangent about Van Morrison's "His Band and the Street Choir" when you are saved by the distraction of your girlfriend's whiny little brother shooting Nerf guns from behind the couch.

Also, Natasha, if you're out there, I'm sorry your dad died of brain cancer.

Based on my prior ideas about Suzanne Vega, I expected to rate this a 4 or even a 3. I liked her pretty well and put on her greatest hits about once a year, but also kind of slotted her into the category of music made by people who listen to NPR for people who listen to NPR. Which is me of course, but I also expected it to be sort of cerebral and narrow in the way NPR can be.

Nope, she fooled me. When you pay closer attention, her lyrics are dark and savage, yet still delivered in that relatively narrow range. It disarms you. I had heard an undertone of menace before in her more popular songs like “Tom’s Diner,” and obviously “Luka” has its sublimated violence. But sit with this long enough and you realize you are listening to a poet who takes no prisoners in her portraits of others and herself. I have to give the self-titled a 5 for convincing me she is a dark genius and deciding to check out all her work.

There may be a longer essay in me somewhere about the sound and the lyrics and where they fit into my impressionistic history of folk music. I don’t have the energy to make the whole case tonight, but I feel like her sound is a sort of yin companion to the yang of Paul Simon. Paul Simon adopted various sounds after S&G but they all make you feel positive about most anything, even if it’s whatever the hell happened to Julio down by the schoolyard.

Suzanne Vega also has this quasi-commercial 80s folk sound, but she somehow twists it in a way that everything she says is a little bit unsettling, even though it sounds perfectly lovely. It’s how I felt the first time I heard “Tom’s Diner” without the dance beats… you think, “Oh, maybe this isn’t the cheerful slice of life that I thought.” I think so many of her songs here do that, even though by all accounts she’s a perfectly lovely human.

Pleasant enough but not particularly interesting or exciting.