Suzanne Vega Artistfacts

July 11, 1959
Suzanne Vega was born in Santa Monica, California, but grew up in Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side of New York City.
She was raised by her mother, a computer systems analyst and her stepfather, the Puerto Rican writer Egardo Vega Yunque.
Suzanne Vega attended New York City's High School of Performing Arts (the school that later inspired the 1980 film Fame), where she studied modern dance and graduated in 1977. Looking back, she said the school did its best with her but she never quite fit the mold.

"It was just like the movie," she recalled to Uncut magazine. "Everybody's really extroverted, dancing, singing, and drama everywhere. And, you know, it's not my temperament. But I learned over time how to give a show in my own way."

After high school, Vega went on to Barnard College, where she majored in English literature.
Suzanne Vega wrote "Tom's Diner" whilst eating breakfast at Tom's Restaurant in New York City. Tom's Restaurant was also used as the model for Jerry Seinfield's hang out in his hit sitcom Seinfield.
She auditioned for the lead role in Desperately Seeking Susan, but lost out to Madonna.
In 1989 Suzanne Vega became the first ever woman to headline at UK's Glastonbury Festival. After receiving death threats from a girl infatuated with her bass player, Vega performed in a bulletproof vest.
When German computer programmer Karlheinz Brandenburg was developing the technology that would come to be known as the MP3, he found that Suzanne Vega's voice was the perfect template with which to test the purity of the audio compression that he was aiming to perfect. As a result, the MP3 format's voice compression was specifically calibrated to sound good when playing "Tom's Diner". Because of this, Vega has been referred to as the "Mother of the MP3."
Vega was the first major recording artist to perform live in the Internet-based virtual world, Second Life. The event, which took place on August 3, 2006, was hosted by John Hockenberry of public radio's The Infinite Mind.

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