Suzanne Vega - Tom's Diner

"Tom's Diner" is an a cappella pop song written in 1981 by American singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega. It was originally recorded by Vega as the first track on her album Solitude Standing in 1987. The vocal was used as the basis for a popular remix by the British group The DNA Disciples, which made the song a hit in 1990. The 1991 release Tom's Album includes the DNA version as well as cover versions by such artists as After One and "Bingo Hand Job" (a/k/a R.E.M. and Billy Bragg). The "Tom's Diner" of the song is Tom's Restaurant in New York City, which was later fictionalized as Monk's Cafe in Seinfeld. The song is written as a simple first person vignette of a man stopping at an unnamed diner for a cup of coffee. He notes the newspaper he is reading, and the women who come and go in the diner, outside in the rain. The ringing of bells at a nearby cathedral cause him to reminisce on an unnamed companion with whom he had picnicked previously. Finishing his coffee, he hurries from the diner to catch a train. Vega wrote the song based on a comment by her friend Brian Rose, a photographer, who mentioned that in his work, he sometimes felt as if "he saw his whole life through a pane of glass, and [...] like he was the witness to a lot of things, but was never really involved in them." She attempted to think and write in this fashion (including a male perspective [1]) while sitting at Tom's Restaurant, a diner on the corner of Broadway and 112th Street in New York City, which would later become famous as a location for some exterior scenes in the popular television sitcom Seinfeld. (The building belongs to Columbia University and houses some of its programs, as well as NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.) The "bells of the cathedral" that she remarks hearing in the song are those of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, located opposite the end of the street. In 1990, two secretive British record producers remixed "Tom's Diner" without Suzanne Vega's permission, grafting her vocals onto an infectious dance beat from Soul II Soul, and turning her simple ad-libbed outro - "Doo doo doo doo, doo da-doo doo" - into the song's driving hook. They took the name "DNA", later calling themselves The DNA Disciples to distinguish themselves from no wave band DNA, and released their work on a limited basis for distribution to clubs as "Oh Suzanne", by "DNA featuring Suzanne Vega". Vega's record company of the time, A&M, decided to buy the single and release it themselves rather than taking DNA to court for copyright infringement after consultation with Vega, who liked the interpretation, and DNA, who conducted the whole deal through intermediaries in order to hide their true identities. The remix became a much larger hit than Vega had with the song originally, and spawned a number of rap, dance, and rock remixes and remakes from artists such as Peter Behrens and "Bingo Hand Job", a whimsical one-time collaboration between Billy Bragg and R.E.M. It was also sampled in songs by Public Enemy and Lil Kim, among other rap acts.