- published: 15 Dec 2010
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Suzanne Nadine Vega (born July 11, 1959) is an American songwriter and singer known for her eclectic folk-inspired music.
Two of Vega's songs (both from her second album Solitude Standing, 1987) reached the top 10 of various international chart listings: "Luka" and "Tom's Diner". The latter was originally an a cappella version on Vega's album, which was then remade in 1990 as a dance track produced by the British dance production team DNA.
Vega was born July 11, 1959 in Santa Monica, California. Her mother, Pat Vega, is a computer systems analyst of German-Swedish heritage. Her father, Richard Peck, is of Scottish-English-Irish origin. They divorced soon after her birth. Her stepfather, Ed Vega, also known as Edgardo Vega Yunque, was a writer and teacher from Puerto Rico.
When Vega was two and a half, the family moved to New York City. She grew up in Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side. At the age of nine she began to write poetry; she wrote her first song at age fourteen. Later she attended New York's prestigious High School of Performing Arts (now called LaGuardia High School). There she studied modern dance and graduated in 1977.
If I had met you on some journey
Where would we be now
If we had met some eastbound train
Through some black sleeping town
Would you have worn your silken robes
All made of royal blue?
Would I have dressed in smoke and fire
For you to see through?
If we had met in a darkened room
Where people do not stay
But shadows touch and pass right through
And never see the day
Would you have taken me upstairs
And turned the lamplight low?
Would I have shown my secret self
And disappeared like the snow?
Oh, I could have played your little girl
Or I could have played your wife
I could have played your mistress
Running danger down through you life
I could have played your lady fair
All dressed in lace like the foam from the sea
I could have been your woman of the road
As long as you did not come back home to me
But as it is, we live in the city
And everything stays in place
Instead we meet on the open sidewalk
And it's well I know your face
We talk and talk, we tell the truth
There are no shadows here
But when I look into your eyes
I wonder what might have been here
Because if I had met you on some journey