Production Breakdown: Tom’s Diner, The Most-Sampled Track in DJBooth History Posted by Richard on 03/19/10 | Filed under Production Breakdown, Suzanne Vega, Git Fresh

For as frequently as we've heard the “Da da da-da, da da-da-da” hook from Suzanne Vega's '90's smash “Tom's Diner” used by artists in the Booth, you'd think that we'd have gotten tired of it long ago, but that hasn't been the case; 2Pac, Gorilla Zoe, Kevin Cossom, Mike Dreams and Al Gator have all earned respectable-to-great reader reviews for records centered around that immortal sample, and just yesterday a sixth act added their name to the list: R&B quintet Git Fresh grabbed it for the chorus of new promo single “She Be Like.”

Of course, that's only the tip of the iceberg – in fact, I wouldn't hesitate to call it one of the most influential pop songs ever, for reasons that may or may not become clear over the course of this column (hey, it's not like I write outlines for these beforehand)

Perhaps the oddest thing about “Tom's Diner” is that, in its initial form, it didn't sound like a megahit at all. To illustrate, here's Vega herself performing the song (right after telling half of my story for me - how convenient!)



Those sing-song ramblings, written at (and about) Tom's Restaurant in NYC (later immortalized as Monk's Diner of Seinfeld fame) sound to me like the distilled essence of open mic artiness (awkward silences galore!); to British production duo DNA, it sounded like a hit. In 1990, three years after the original's '87 release as a single off Vega's sophomore album, Solitude Standing, the twosome concocted their own version of the track. “Oh Suzanne,” as it was originally called, featured two crucial changes: in addition to adding a beat, itself driven by a sample from R&B group Soul II Soul's “Back to Life (However Do You want Me)”) DNA transformed Vega's ad-libbed “Da da da-da...” outro into the record's hook. It was so simple, it took two geniuses to come up with it.



Realizing the massive potential of DNA's dancefloor-scorching mashup/remix, Vega's label, A&M opted to purchase it instead of litigating. Sure enough, it went on to become a number-one hit, spawning a wave of variations, imitations, mutations, covers and homages that continues to this very day. In '91, A&M even dropped a compilation entitled Tom's Album , which included everything from a surprisingly natural reggae cover by Michigan and Smiley to a downright strange Gulf War-themed re-imagining by Beth Watson.

If that were the end of the story, well, it would be a pretty good story – but it isn't. Though DNA's remix was much, much more popular and profitable, the a cappella was still, arguably, just as influential. How is that possible? Well, the rich tones of Vega's unaccompanied voice became a standard against which hi-fi stereo systems were tested, and, when a German engineer named Karlheinz Brandenberg was working on an audio compression format called the MPEG-1 Layer 3 , "Tom's Diner" was used to judge the success of his refinements. Thus, Suzanne Vega has hyperbolically, but not entirely inaccurately been referred to as the ”Mother of the MP3”

So there you have it: the unusual history of “Tom's Diner,” a record artists and listeners seem to return to as frequently as, well, regular customers to a local diner. Until next time, RefinedHypesters!

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