There are moments that define music history; The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, Woodstock, Clay Aiken’s runner up performance on American Idol season 2… I mean… eh, screw it.

(FYI: I had to look up that Idol reference on Wikipedia, then immediately had to delete it from my search history, least I should die suddenly in the night and someone does a search on my drive to search for answers and find… that.)

But, Suzanne Vega? HUGE part of musical history. If you’ve got ear buds on while you’re reading this, then you can partially thank Suzanne. Well, her and some German engineers, but mostly her.

There’s a great read here about the history of the song “Tom’s Diner” where we learn:

-it was written in a crappy restaurant in New York City in 1982, even though it wasn’t a hit until 1990
-the diner she’s talking about was also the same one the tv show Seinfield used
-the ‘actor’ reference in the song was about William Holden

There’s a bunch of other tidbits that make for an interesting history of a song, but towards the end of the article we find out that a guy by the name of Karl-Heinz Brandenberg overheard the original (read: a capella) version of the tune and became obsessed with breaking it down into (what became) the MP3 form that we all know and love today.

It’s a long read, but a really good and well written one. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have enough interesting facts to start an intelligent/random conversation with that hot girl you’ve been eying on the bus every morning. Assuming she’s wearing earphones to listen to some bubble gum synth pop, as opposed to having them in to avoid a conversation with you, the creepy guy who won’t stop staring at her.

See? Mother of the MP3, AND Wingwoman. How is it that you haven’t sent Suzanne Vega a thank-you card yet? Selfish jerk.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Interesting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.