I fell in love with this song from the first moment I heard it, in Prague, 2006. It's hard to tell what it caused me to feel, since the feelings were such a paradox.

The best way I find to put it is: nostalgia for a place where I've never been.

Let me explain, for an European sensitive to cinema, tv, music, literature, the United States are like a second home country. One whose culture has impregnated us almost from birth. Keeping on this idea, New York City is a kind of hometown to many of my memories. I think that making me realise this was this song's first achievement.

There's an "old" feel to the atmosphere the song conveys. It talks through movies and about movies. I hear it in black and white, and yet it's emotionally colourful. By the time I first heard it had no idea about the album cover, but now it doesn't surprise me, it's as if I expected it from this song. The "film noir" mood, the "femme fatale" image, the Marlene Dietrich feel, the evocation of the 40's, when these movies were made.

Maybe it's my usual need to relate to memories through images. Places coexist in my mind all the time, as a kind of inner travelling that makes me float from place to place every second of my life. I'm here right now, as much as I'm in Stockholm, Milan, Prague or.. New York. Movies and songs transport me often. And now with this song Suzanne joined both means to make me travel to my imaginary New York.

Yes, somehow I've been there, laughing with "The Seven Year Itch"; rushing to see the sights in one day with "On The Town"; romantically waiting on the top of the Empire State Building with "An Affair To Remember"; visiting the underworld and the night with many of Martin Scorsese's movies; celebrating the city that never sleeps with his "New York, New York"; learning about my own existential doubts with Woody Allen's work, the black and white (again!)  "Manhattan" most of all.

The list could go on endlessly.

Yes, I feel its cold winters, its Autumn rain, I can smell its "smoke and ash still rising to the sky", I can see its people around me, and hear its music. I know so many of its places, coffee shops and morning streets. Through hopes and delusions New York has made me laugh and sometimes cry. But most of all it made me dream, it made me feel I belonged there somehow.

After hearing this song for the first time, I hoped I could make its video. The idea struck me with Suzanne's first words, and it was ready when she finished the performance. It's a simple collage of clips showing New York's poetry, as evoked in movies. A very special poetry sometimes happy, sometimes dark. Sometimes shiny and glamorous, sometimes just grey, "steam and steel". But always human... always a woman.

And to her I'm just another guy.

The video may never be produced. But it's beautiful in my mind. And believe me, I'm fortunate enough to "see it" every time I hear Suzanne singing.

A final word for the song's arrangement. I think it's perfect. The acoustic guitar in the centre, the beautiful soft drumming, the brass sound reminding us of the jazzy culture. It all flows, and breathes around Suzanne's voice in a way that i simply adore.

Suzanne, you did it again! Thank you!

j.c.

jose-carlos:

Let me explain, for an European sensitive to cinema, tv, music, literature, the United States are like a second home country. One whose culture has impregnated us almost from birth. Keeping on this idea, New York City is a kind of hometown to many of my memories.

I can see exactly what you mean. I feel the same way about NYC, even though I've never been there (or should I say "especially as I've never been there"?) Having been a huge Woody Allen fan as a teenager, especially of the "Annie Hall"/"Manhattan" era, I feel that it couldn't be otherwise. And I really like what you write about this song, it's all beautifully said.

I haven't played it often enough to be fully familiar with it yet, but it's certainly beautiful. I particularly like the way the chorus sounds -- this idea that "she'll make you cry but to her you're just another guy". I had that phrase in mind the whole day yesterday. I love both the idea and the sound of it. 

When I first heard this song, I didn't like it very much.  I was thinking "Oh great, Maggie Mae part 2" except that it's a metaphor and it's a city not an actual woman.  And at first, I thought the song sounded too "soft" and overdramatized and over-the-top.

But then I got the album and it didn't take very many listens before I totally changed my mind.  I'd say that along with "Anniversary", "Ludlow Street", and "Angel's Doorway", this is one of the strongest songs on the album.

It is actually quite heartbreaking.  The way she sings this song is particularly effective and though she has a matter-of-fact tone and delivery through much of the song, it is actually quite vulnerable and tragic and heartbreaking.  True genius is when you are able to render or paint or sing heartbreak and tragedy in strokes that, in and of themselves, are not heartbreaking and tragic, and that's one thing I like about this song, that Vega achieves this.

In particular, in the very first sentence, when she sings "New York City spread herself before you / With her bangles and her spangles and her stars", my heart immediately starts breaking at even that very early point.  Partially, it's my foreknowledge of the lyrics that are coming up later as well as knowing what the song is about, but just the way she sings and treats *that particular part* is so moving.  We revel in her splendour which makes us all the more vulnerable when we simultaneously know and consider the other truths of the city and what it's been through.  We know that NYC has a lot to offer, but when a city goes through something like 9/11, that's a serious, permanent blemish or scar, to say the very least. 

Also, NYC, by U.S. standards, is a very old city whereas cities down South and out West are much newer and are growing a lot more rapidly, and NYC is also losing some power to down South and out West, and 9/11 didn't exactly help matters.  The idea to treat NYC as a woman, metaphorically, was a brilliant one and reminds me of New Orleans and how I once read, I think, in a travel guide, it being compared to an aging courtesan.  They are both old, important (again, by U.S. or Anglo North American standards, not necessarily by worldwide standards) cities, but they have seen better days and have been gravely wounded in recent years.  However, they have a certain kind and degree of timelessness and can't be totally destroyed by reductionist discourse. 

After a while, because of the combined efforts of so many people and so many different forces, these cities become living entities on their own, and the way that she portrayed NYC and cast it in relation to individuals in hypothetical situations (here, as well as elsewhere on the album) really does belie somebody who truly loves the city.  Now, if only New Yorkers truly appreciated her like they should...

-M