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 ...

Jane Child, "Don't Wanna Fall in Love"

On some level, Jane Child is the queen of the near-misses. Her sole Top 40 chart entry, "Don't Wanna Fall in Love," peaked at #2, losing out in one of the closest battles in Billboard chart history to Tommy Page's "I'll Be Your Everything," an appropriately forgotten New Kid trifle. Child's follow-up, "Welcome to the Real World," narrowly missed the Top 40, topping out at #49.

But her whinnying visage lives on: Who could forget that mohawk adjoined by cornrows flailing like a beaded curtain, that nose ring making a dangling conversation with its connected earring, that fever dream of Ann Coulter scoring on St. Marks Place? Child's was a memorable moment, and it's to her credit that "Don't Wanna Fall in Love" sounds so much better than its lyrically embarrassing chorus might suggest:

I don't wanna fall in love
Love cuts just like a knife
You make the knife feel good
I'll fight you to the end

Whitman could hardly have said it better.

Sinead O'Connor, "Nothing Compares 2 U"

Heard this song in a pharmacy last week and on the radio the other day. Amazing that it still chokes me up 18 years later. I've never heard the Family's original take and am actually not curious to. I have, though, heard Prince do it live - but wonderful though Rosie Gaines can be, she couldn't hold a candle to the unpredictable O'Connor's take on "Nothing Compares 2 U".

PS: I had originally planned to link to the original, touching video, but every YouTube clip I found had the music excised. Wondering if that's Prince being hyperprotective as usual of his work.