OH SUZANNE
“Tom’s Diner” is a song written in 1981 by American singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega and featured as the first track of her Solitude Standing album in 1987. In 1990, two anonymous British record producers remixed “Tom’s Diner” and, without permission from Vega, her record label, or publisher, the duo released the remix for distribution to clubs as “Oh Suzanne” by “DNA featuring Suzanne Vega”. Vega’s record company of the time, A&M, decided to buy and release the remix rather than take DNA to court for copyright infringement. The remix became one of a handful of tracks to chart in the top 10 of both the Modern Rock Tracks (#7) and Billboard R&B Tracks (#10) charts. (More from Wikipedia)
Suzanne Vega was basically an acoustic artist when she started out, and she scored a major hit in 1987 with “Luka” from her second album Solitude Standing. In 1990, an anonymous duo called DNA released a bootleg single based on an a capella track from that album called “Tom’s Diner” that was set to an electronic beat; originally released under the name “Oh Suzanne”, they had an unexpected hit song a full 3 years after her album came out (and nearly 10 years after Vega originally wrote the song). Suzanne Vega allowed the single to be issued legitimately and subsequently released several albums of her own with an edgier sound, as well as Tom’s Album that included several other unsolicited versions of this same song.
(March 2012)
