The great singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega has had an amazing career that stretches back decades, and it's not an exaggeration to call her a straight-up legend. But everyone feels small when they compare themselves to somebody else. Today, Vega has a new song that's all about existing in someone else's shadow. On "Chambermaid," she sings about tending to a "great man": "I revere the places he has stayed and clean crumbs from his typewriter." It's all about inspiration and maybe also insignificance -- the ways that it can be hard to separate those two feelings.
"Chambermaid" comes from Vega's upcoming LP Flying With Angels, her first album of original material in eleven years. We've already posted the early songs "Rats" and "Speakers' Corner." When she posted a "Chambermaid" teaser clip yesterday, Vega wrote that the song is "inspired by a song I’ve always loved -- by an artist who’s meant a great deal to me over the years. There’s a thread of something familiar in it, though it’s taken its own shape." I feel pretty confident in saying that the song in question is Bob Dylan's "I Want You." Vega's track starts out as a riff on that, but her melody diverges and become something else. Listen below.
Flying With Angels is out 5/2 on Cooking Vinyl.
