The Queen and the Soldier

Without a doubt, Suzanne Vega remains the most resonant and engaging luminary to emerge from the short-lived 1980s folk-pop movement, which provided a viable alternative to the garishly gaudy New Romantic acts and greyscale post-punk acts that dominated the Me Decade. Vega's songs are things of awe and revelation: equally inspired by the nebulous wordplay of Bob Dylan and the sharply drawn songwriting of Leonard Cohen, and calibrated by her own acutely sharp observations of life in detail, they are fiercely intelligent and quietly compelling gems wrapped in coolly impassive, yet eminently accessible melodies. This brand of sophisticated leftfield pop has produced extraordinary, lasting compositions which should have made bigger impacts on the charts, if only the industry was more welcoming of this sort of leftfield pop. Check out Vega's appealing artistry in this 1997 live performance of the baroque-sounding 'The Queen and the Soldier', an oblique anti-war tale set to measured steel-string guitar lines.