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| Suzanne Vega - Marlene On The Wall |
Suzanne Vega - Marlene On The Wall Youtube Music Videos and LyricsAlbum:
Suzanne Vega Released:
1985 Even if I am in love with you
All this to say, what's it to you?
Observe the blood, the rose tattoo
Of the fingerprints on me from you
Other evidence has shown
That you and I are still alone
We skirt around the danger zone
And don't talk about it later
Marlene watches from the wall
Her mocking smile says it all
As the records the rise and fall
Of every soldier passing
But the only soldier now is me
I'm fighting things I cannot see
I think it's called my destiny
That I am changing
Marlene On The WallI walk to your house in the afternoon
By the butcher shot with the sawdust strewn
"Don't give away the goods too soon"
Is what she might have told me
Marlene watches from the wall
Her mocking smile says it all
As the records the rise and fall
Of every man who's been here
But the only one here now is me
I'm fighting things I cannot see
I think it's called my destiny
That I am changing
Marlene on the wall
Writer/s: VEGA, SUZANNE
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by
LyricFindMarlene On The Wall Vega wrote this about coping with loneliness; she finds comfort by looking up to a poster of Marlene Dietrich on the wall. Vega really did have a poster of Dietrich on her wall. She explained in SongTalk magazine: "That was a truthful song. The lines came out of my life. But you want to be careful, too, because you don't want to get into 'Oh, my boyfriend left me...' I have a problem with specifically confessional songwriting. I think you have to craft it in some way. I don't think you can come on stage and blurt out your innermost feelings. My niece can blurt out her innermost feelings. She's four years old. I wouldn't want to pay $25 to go see her do that. You need to put it in a form. Although it is truthful, you have to give it some respect, or a certain kind of dignity, by putting it into a kind of form. Because these people are not my friends. They're paying to see a show, some form of entertainment. So I'm not gonna sit there and talk to them like Ronee Blakely in Nashville." Marlene Dietrich was a German actress who became an international film star in the 1930's. During World War II, she put her movie career on hold in order to entertain US troops, a move that won her the Medal of Freedom, the highest military award a civilian can receive. Dietrich was 90 years old when she died in 1992. Vega told SongTalk that this song always seemed "A little wide of mark, somehow." Said Vega: "It's accessible and people do like it, but for me, personally, inside myself, I feel I had something in mind, and I kind of did it, it was stylish, it was interesting, but I didn't feel it was quite the bulls-eye that some of the others were. The idea of using a poster as a reference point is a very pop idea. It's a song about Marlene Dietrich. You kind of get that from it, or it's a song about a relationship." This was Vega's first single. It did well in the UK, but didn't get noticed in America. Vega, who is from New York, found success in the US 2 years later with her album Solitude Standing, which contained the hit song, "Luka."