Suzanne Vega reveals Fontaines D.C. influenced her song 'Rats'

In a recent conversation with Hot Press, Suzanne Vega opened up about the inspirations behind her new album and how Fontaines D.C.'s 'Televised Mind' directly influenced the penultimate track on her latest record.

When asked about her songwriting process, Vega instantly name-checked her longtime collaborator Gerry Leonard, the Dublin-born guitarist who also worked with David Bowie.

"We had this ritual where I'd come in, and Gerry would make me a cup of tea or two, and I'd pour my heart out about everything that was going on," she says with a smile. "Then we'd have lunch and some more tea. That would be two hours into the session, and then we'd start fooling around with writing ideas.

"Gerry kept a spreadsheet: here's the title of the track, here are the references. We were referencing everything and anything - Trent Reznor, this band, that band, the other band, soul music, hip-hop."

Not all tracks came from meticulous planning, though. 'Chambermaid', for example, was born from a lyric in Bob Dylan's 'I Want You'.

"I woke up with this idea from a dream: 'I'm Bob Dylan's chambermaid'. I don't remember what the dream actually was, but I had the sense that I had seen him and spoken to him," she says matter-of-factly. "So I thought, well, there's a nice rabbit hole to go down.

"I got up, made a cup of tea, got the guitar and it took me about an hour-and-a-half to write the whole thing."

Vega's music tastes range far and wide. She references everything from Silk Sonic and Bruno Mars to Anderson Paak and Fontaines D.C.

"Two years ago while on tour, we were on a huge Fontaines D.C. kick," she enthuses. "We were listening to them in the car, then in the hotel room afterwards - just really loving the writing and the music."

The Dublin band actually ended up directly influencing the creation of the folk-infused-with-post-punk track 'Rats'.

"When we were working on it, we had this chunky sort of rhythm going, based on 'I Wanna Be Sedated' by the Ramones, and I said, I wanted an angular, descending thing, kind of like Fontaines' 'Televised Mind', and so Gerry whipped off this thing. That was meant to be an homage to that guitar riff."

The resemblance is so clear that at a live show in Chicago, someone in the crowd shouted out the exact track.

"They actually knew Fontaines D.C. well enough to know which song we had appropriated. We didn't steal the line, but it was so obvious that even people from the audience were shouting it out."

You can read the rest of Suzanne Vega's candid interview with Agostino Luisetti in the June Issue of Hot Press Magazine, which is available to order online below: