Best of Design Matters: Suzanne Vega

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This episode of Design Matters originally appeared in September of 2025

**Suzanne Vega** (0:06)
It took a long time to learn how to perform. It took another 10 years until I would say I got better at it. And in fact, that's a lifelong quest for me. How do you embody the feeling and perform it in front of an audience?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:24)
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.
On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, Suzanne Vega talks about her latest album and opens up about the doubts she had early in her career.

**Suzanne Vega** (0:47)
Finally, I started to feel like I am a musician. It's in my family.

**Debbie Millman** (0:58)
For over four decades, Suzanne Vega has been one of the most distinctive and quietly revolutionary voices in music. From her songs, Luka, which gave voice to The Unspoken, to Tom's Diner, which became a cultural touchstone, and even the blueprint for the MP3, her music has blended the intimate with the universal.
A poet of observation and empathy, Suzanne Vega has continually reinvented her sound, while staying true to her storytelling roots. With her new album, Flying with Angels, she once again captures the struggles and resilience of our times. Suzanne Vega, welcome to Design Matters.

**Suzanne Vega** (1:40)
Thank you.

**Debbie Millman** (1:41)
Suzanne, I read that you've been mistaken for Cynthia Nixon. Beth Orton, Isabella Rossellini, and Molly Ringwald.
What do you make of that range of doppelgangers?

**Suzanne Vega** (1:54)
I don't know.
I guess I remind people of something or someone. I think I'm a little bit of a shapeshifter, actually. I think it's amusing.

**Debbie Millman** (2:05)
Do you enjoy that sort of chameleon quality?

**Suzanne Vega** (2:09)
Well, I've come to live with it. It took me a while to realize that was even happening.
When I was in my 20s and I started to do photoshoots, I realized that every photo looked different and I looked like a different woman in each photo. That is something I've never quite been able to figure out or to control, is the whole issue of image. So I don't bother with it anymore so much. I work on certain things, but most people know me by my name and my voice.

**Debbie Millman** (2:44)
You were born in Santa Monica but moved to Spanish Harlem when you were two.
There you lived with your parents, your mom and stepfather, and in a multicultural household. How did that shape your sense of identity as a child?

**Suzanne Vega** (2:59)
It confirmed the idea that I was a changeling, that I was mutable, that identity was mutable because I grew up close to my Puerto Rican relatives, to my grandmother, my aunt, my uncle and spoke Spanish. I had been to Puerto Rico and then later on, I realized, well, my stepfather told me that I had a different father.

**Debbie Millman** (3:27)
And you were nine when that happened, I believe.

**Suzanne Vega** (3:30)
Yeah, I was nine and so I thought I had my identity down, even though I was constantly getting feedback from kids in the neighborhood and other people who would see our family would sort of look at me and go, okay, where did she come from? Because in a sense, I was the red haired stepchild. Literally, that kind of stood out in our family. So I learned then that identity was something that could change, that could change overnight, and that ultimately I learned not to identify with cultural things like Am I Puerto Rican? Am I white? That became something that could fall away. So I learned to define myself from the inside using other signifiers.
Since I'm a changeling, I feel that I don't need to mark myself in that way. I just find a way to be myself without joining any particular group.

**Debbie Millman** (4:30)
You've said that you've always felt more of an observer than a participant. And do you trace that to your childhood in a household that was both nurturing and volatile?

**Suzanne Vega** (4:43)
So yeah, I'm sure some of it was, but some of it I think was also my nature.
Over the years, I've come to wonder and believe that I probably am somewhat neurodivergent. Sometimes if you're neurodivergent, you have a delay in emotional processing. So I think I have that. And so therefore, there are times where maybe something's going on in the household and I have to respond. So because I'm not fully emotionally invested in the moment, that sort of comes later. It can be two days later, it can be a month later, it can be a year later. There's a sense of delay where I process things.