Beauty & Crime

Last updated
Beauty & Crime
Suzanne Vega B&C Cover.jpg
Studio album by
ReleasedJuly 17, 2007 (2007-07-17)
RecordedNovember 2006 – January 2007
Studio
  • Great City, New York City
  • Sear Sound, New York City
  • Jimmy's Studio, London, UK
  • Olympic, London, UK
Genre
Length33:58
Label Blue Note
Producer Jimmy Hogarth
Suzanne Vega chronology
Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega
(2003)
Beauty & Crime
(2007)
Close-Up Vol. 1, Love Songs
(2010)
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic 84/100 [1]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [2]
Entertainment Weekly A− [3]
musicOMH Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [4]
PopMatters Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg [5]
Stylus B [6]
Under the Radar Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg [1]
USA Today Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [7]

Beauty & Crime is the seventh studio album by singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega. It is her first album of new material since 2001's Songs in Red and Gray and her first for Blue Note Records. It was released on July 17, 2007. Beauty & Crime won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, on February 11, 2008. It was dedicated to Tim Vega, Suzanne's younger half-brother who had died in 2002.

Contents

Development

After lukewarm commercial success for her last two albums, Nine Objects of Desire (1996) and Songs in Red and Gray (2001) A&M Records ended their contract with Vega[ citation needed ] with the release of the more commercially successful hits package Retrospective in 2003.

Vega embarked on an extensive tour and performed songs from Beauty & Crime in their early forms, including "Unbound", "Edith Wharton's Figurines", and "New York Is a Woman".

The album was recorded in New York City from November 10–27, 2006, with additional recording in England in January 2007.

Track listing

All tracks written by Suzanne Vega.

  1. "Zephyr & I" – 3:10
  2. "Ludlow Street" – 3:16
  3. "New York Is a Woman" – 2:54
  4. "Pornographer's Dream" – 3:23
  5. "Frank & Ava" – 2:38
  6. "Edith Wharton's Figurines" – 2:23
  7. "Bound" – 4:43
  8. "Unbound" – 3:34
  9. "As You Are Now" – 2:20
  10. "Angel's Doorway" – 2:55
  11. "Anniversary" – 2:57
Bonus track (Japanese edition)
  1. "Obvious Question" – 1:50

Personnel

Production

Notes

Vega wrote following comments on the album's songs:

Charts

Chart performance for Beauty & Crime
Chart (2007)Peak
position
Australian Albums (ARIA) [8] 302
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders) [9] 31
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia) [10] 69
Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista) [11] 13
Czech Albums[ citation needed ]37
Estonian Albums[ citation needed ]9
French Albums (SNEP) [12] 52
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100) [13] 81
Italian Albums (FIMI) [14] 74
Polish Albums (ZPAV) [15] 49
Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade) [16] 79
UK Albums [17] 127
US Billboard 200 [18] 129
US Billboard Comprehensive Albums [ citation needed ]140

See also

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References

  1. 1 2 "Beauty & Crime by Suzanne Vega". Metacritic . Retrieved 3 June 2016.
  2. Allmusic review
  3. "Beauty & Crime - EW.com". Entertainment Weekly . Archived from the original on 23 January 2009. Retrieved 3 June 2016.
  4. "Suzanne Vega - Beauty And Crime - Albums - musicOMH". musicOMH . 10 June 2007. Retrieved 3 June 2016.
  5. PopMatters review
  6. "Beauty & Crime". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 3 June 2016.
  7. Reviewed by Elysa Gardner, USA Today : Suzanne Vega, Beauty & Crime: * * * (out of four) Epistle to city. The veteran troubadour's latest is a predictably smart, vaguely haunted love letter to her lifelong home, New York City. From tautly driving tunes such as "Zephyr" and the single "Frank & Ava" to moodier, more bittersweet fare, Vega evokes the grit and grace of her stomping grounds. And the crisp economy of her singing and writing have never been more welcome.
  8. "Response from ARIA re: ARIA chart history for Suzanne Vega, received October 31, 2017". Imgur.com. Retrieved October 31, 2017. N.B. The High Point number in the NAT column represents the release's peak on the national chart. This history only contains data from the commencement of the ARIA-produced chart in mid-1988.
  9. "Ultratop.be – Suzanne Vega – Beauty & Crime" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
  10. "Ultratop.be – Suzanne Vega – Beauty & Crime" (in French). Hung Medien. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
  11. "Suzanne Vega: Beauty & Crime" (in Finnish). Musiikkituottajat – IFPI Finland. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
  12. "Lescharts.com – Suzanne Vega – Beauty & Crime". Hung Medien. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
  13. "Longplay-Chartverfolgung at Musicline" (in German). Musicline.de. Phononet GmbH. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
  14. "Italiancharts.com – Suzanne Vega – Beauty & Crime". Hung Medien.
  15. "Oficjalna lista sprzedaży :: OLiS - Official Retail Sales Chart". OLiS. Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
  16. "Swisscharts.com – Suzanne Vega – Beauty & Crime". Hung Medien. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
  17. Beauty & Crime UK albums chart peak: "Chart Log UK 1994–2010 > V – Vybe". Dipl.-Bibl.(FH) Tobias Zywietz. Archived from the original on October 16, 2015. Retrieved October 30, 2015.
  18. "Suzanne Vega Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved June 8, 2014.