On this, the latest single from Suzanne Vega’s soon-to-be-released album ‘Flying With Angels‘ we find the coffee shop folk-rock rebel picking up crumbs and re-arranging the books on their shelves for the looming singer-songwriter genius of the 20th and 21st centuries. Nobody is forcing her to do this, if asked she’d doubtless reply “I want to, honey I want to, I want to sooooo….bad.” So that’s fine.
It’s a tribute of sorts of course, and it’s a reflection on the perennial issue of not being Bob Dylan. Tough one – but as long as you find your own voice, as long as you have something to say, as long as you’re cool with not having people digging through your garbage does it, in the end, really matter? Suzanne Vega has no apologies to make, and quite rightly doesn’t make any.
As an aside, apparently this marks my 3,000th post on this iteration of the Americana UK web site – who knows what the total is if all earlier iterations could be accessed. It’s just a number, has no greater value than any other but then, like The Count, we sure do love to count. If it were to matter I can’t think of anything better than a mash-up of Vega and Dylan to mark it with. So, the arrival of this song was remarkably serendipitous.
Happy Birthday Jon
Dylan himself often steals from other artists, and no one really seems to mind, because he does it so well. Suzanne is paying homage to Dylan, the way poets do, describing a poem as “after” a certain poet. This song is “after” Bob Dylan’s song “I Want You”,