Suzanne Vega and DNA, "Tom's Diner"

Some months ago, I learned the story of how the hit version of "Tom's Diner" came to be. Its author, Suzanne Vega, told the tale in a wonderful New York Times blog entry.

But "Tom's Diner" is not just a tale of two dance-remix mavens finding an a capella track and inserting a very 1990 beat behind it to score a very unlikely Top 10 hit. The more interesting story is that behind the lyrics themselves: turns out Tom's Diner is the very real Tom's Restaurant on 112th Street and Broadway in NYC - the same spot where Jerry and his friends hung out over coffee in Seinfeld. What are the odds of one restaurant having two distinct entries in the Pop Culture Vulture catalog?

Getting back to the song, a few enterprising fans heard her description of the songwriting process and got to wondering: Who was the dead movie star ("no one [Vega] had heard of")? They were able to piece together from her location of the horoscope and funnies that the paper she was reading was the New York Post, and from there deduced that the actor in question was William Holden, who had died in November 1981.

(Suzanne Vega had never heard of William Holden?)

It was November 18, 1981, that the Post reported the death of Holden, giving Vega something to read, and thus something to write about, and thus something to sing, and thus something for DNA to remix and send to the Top 10. In honor of such serendipity today, go have a cup of coffee at Tom's Restaurant.

Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo ...