The Queen and the Soldier
Like many my age, I first noticed Suzanne Vega through Luka. That song made Vega the first of the "New Folk" movement of early 80s New York to become a household name.
Luka is from her second album, Solitude Standing, but in some ways Suzanne Vega's first self-titled album is better, more consistent and more coherent as an album. The best known song on that album is Marlene On the Wall about a painting Marlena Dietrich watching the comings and goings of lovers in the narrator's life. The masterpiece of Suzanne Vega (the album), however, is The Queen and the Soldier.
On the surface, TQ&TS is an old fashioned ballard. A war-weary soldier comes to the queen's palace and says that he can't fight for her any longer. The young queen (based on Elizabeth I?) recognizes something in the soldier and silently lets him in. The soldier tells the queen that they are losing more battles than they are winning. He goes on to say that he thinks the queen is fighting the war just for the fun of it. The queen fixes the soldier "with an arrogant eye" and tells him that he wouldn't understand the reasons for the war.
Then the song takes a twist with the queen saying
"I have swallowed a secret burning thread
It cuts me inside and often I've bled"
The soldier compassionately turns to the queen and sees that she is lonely and frightened. He still wouldn't fight for her but instead says he wants an honest life loving "a woman who I don't understand" (meaning the queen).
The queen asks him to wait for a minute while she finishes some business. This being a tragedy, the queen has the soldier killed.
The beauty of this song is that it has several layers underneath the main story. Who is the queen and who is the soldier? Do they represent women and men? There are obvious references to sex with the soldier being drawn down a long hall with the queen's "tapestries red". And what is the secret burning thread? The loneliness of the duty of command? It could also be a primitive IUD as the young Queen Elizabeth often took lovers from commoners and needed a way to maintain her purity.
The secret burning thread also reappears at the end in the last lines:
"And while the queen went on strangling in the soltitude she preffered, the battle continued on."
On the other hand, the queen and the soldier could represent different facets of the same person, with the queen representing that side we keep hidden "closed up like a fan" and under control and the soldier representing the side we keep open, revealed, and direct.
Luka is from her second album, Solitude Standing, but in some ways Suzanne Vega's first self-titled album is better, more consistent and more coherent as an album. The best known song on that album is Marlene On the Wall about a painting Marlena Dietrich watching the comings and goings of lovers in the narrator's life. The masterpiece of Suzanne Vega (the album), however, is The Queen and the Soldier.
On the surface, TQ&TS is an old fashioned ballard. A war-weary soldier comes to the queen's palace and says that he can't fight for her any longer. The young queen (based on Elizabeth I?) recognizes something in the soldier and silently lets him in. The soldier tells the queen that they are losing more battles than they are winning. He goes on to say that he thinks the queen is fighting the war just for the fun of it. The queen fixes the soldier "with an arrogant eye" and tells him that he wouldn't understand the reasons for the war.
Then the song takes a twist with the queen saying
"I have swallowed a secret burning thread
It cuts me inside and often I've bled"
The soldier compassionately turns to the queen and sees that she is lonely and frightened. He still wouldn't fight for her but instead says he wants an honest life loving "a woman who I don't understand" (meaning the queen).
The queen asks him to wait for a minute while she finishes some business. This being a tragedy, the queen has the soldier killed.
The beauty of this song is that it has several layers underneath the main story. Who is the queen and who is the soldier? Do they represent women and men? There are obvious references to sex with the soldier being drawn down a long hall with the queen's "tapestries red". And what is the secret burning thread? The loneliness of the duty of command? It could also be a primitive IUD as the young Queen Elizabeth often took lovers from commoners and needed a way to maintain her purity.
The secret burning thread also reappears at the end in the last lines:
"And while the queen went on strangling in the soltitude she preffered, the battle continued on."
On the other hand, the queen and the soldier could represent different facets of the same person, with the queen representing that side we keep hidden "closed up like a fan" and under control and the soldier representing the side we keep open, revealed, and direct.