Tom's Diner

The real Tom's Restaurant

The "Tom's Diner" of the song is Tom's Restaurant in New York City,[3][4] a mid-20th-century diner on the corner of Broadway and 112th Street. Singer and songwriter Suzanne Vega was reputedly a frequent patron during the early 1980s when she was a student at nearby Barnard College.[5] The diner later became famous as the location used for the exterior scenes of Monk's Café in the popular 1990s television sitcom Seinfeld.[5]

The song begins with the narrator stopping at a diner for a cup of coffee. The song mentions reading a newspaper as well as seeing two women, one who enters the diner and one who stands outside in the rain. The ringing of bells at a nearby cathedral causes the narrator to reminisce about an unnamed companion and a midnight picnic. At the end of the song, the narrator leaves the diner to catch the train after the coffee is finished.

Vega wrote the song based on a comment by her friend Brian Rose, a photographer, who mentioned that in his work, he sometimes felt as if "he saw his whole life through a pane of glass, and [...] like he was the witness to a lot of things, but was never really involved in them". She attempted to think and write in this fashion (including a male perspective[3]) while sitting at Tom's Restaurant. The "bells of the cathedral" that she remarks hearing in the song are those of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, located one block to the east.

An article on Suzanne Vega's official website[6][7] uses clues in the song to determine the exact date that Vega wrote it.

Vega said that she wrote the song in 1982; Brian Rose has said that it was written sometime between mid-1981 and mid-1982. The lyrics refer to a rainy morning, when she was at the diner on the corner, reading in her newspaper of "a story of an actor / who had died while he was drinking", and afterwards "turning to the horoscope / and looking for the funnies". Only two newspapers in New York City carried comic strips, or "funnies", in 1981 and 1982, and only one, the New York Post, featured a front-page story of the death of Oscar-winning actor William Holden, whose body was discovered on Monday, November 16, 1981. He had died from a fall at his apartment, suffered after drinking excessively. In a 2008 essay for The New York Times, Vega confirmed that Holden was the actor whose death she had read about and inspired the line in the song.[8]

On that day in New York, however, the weather was not rainy, but overcast. Vega has acknowledged that "Tom's Diner" features a composite of events, and that the rain was from a morning she remembered being in the diner during the spring of 1982, after the initial events of the song.

Vega originally conceived "Tom's Diner" as a piece for voice and solo piano. Two versions feature on her album Solitude Standing; the album opens with an a cappella version, and closes with an instrumental version played on keyboards, with guitars lending support.

During the 2006 Major League Baseball season, Cincinnati Reds player Ryan Freel used this song as his entrance song when he came to bat.

An article in the now defunct magazine Business 2.0 revealed that "Tom's Diner" was also used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the audio compression scheme known as MP3 at what is now the Fraunhofer Society. He recalled: "I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm...somewhere down the corridor, a radio was playing 'Tom's Diner.' I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a cappella voice."[9]

In a 2009 documentary about the history of the song by Swedish SVT, Brandenburg said: "I was finishing my PhD thesis, and then I was reading some hi-fi magazine and found that they had used this song to test loudspeakers. I said 'OK, let's test what this song does to my sound system, to MP3'. And the result was, at bit rates where everything else sounded quite nice, Suzanne Vega's voice sounded horrible."[10]

Brandenburg adopted the song for testing purposes, listening to it again and again each time he refined the scheme, making sure it did not adversely affect the subtlety of Vega's voice. While the MP3 compression format is not specifically tuned to play the song "Tom's Diner" (an assortment of critically analyzed material was involved in the design of the codec over many years), among audio engineers this anecdote has earned Vega the informal title "The Mother of the MP3".[11]

12" maxi

1. "Tom's Diner"
2. "Left of Center"
3. "Tom's Diner" (live)
4. "Luka" (live)

In 1990, two British record producers entitled DNA remixed "Tom's Diner", grafting Vega's vocals onto a dance beat from Soul II Soul ("Keep On Movin'") and turning her simple ad-libbed outro – "Da da da duh, doo da-doo doo" – into the song's driving hook. It was impossible to get a whole song into a sampler, so they spent evenings and weekends cutting Vega's vocals into little bits.[16] Without permission from Vega, her record label, or publisher, the duo released the remix on a limited basis for distribution to clubs as "Oh Suzanne" by "DNA featuring Suzanne Vega". Vega's record company of the time, A&M, decided to buy and release the remix rather than take DNA to court for copyright infringement.

A&M struck the deal after consulting with Vega, who liked the interpretation,[17] and DNA, who conducted the transaction through intermediaries without revealing their true identities. The remix became a much larger hit than Vega had with the song originally, peaking at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart and number 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and it became one of a handful of tracks to chart in the top 10 of both the Modern Rock Tracks (number 7) and Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Tracks (number 10) charts. The remix also reached number 1 in Austria, Germany, Greece and Switzerland. A music video was also made of this version.

The remix of the song is written in the key of F♯ minor in common time with a tempo of 99 beats per minute.[18] Vega's vocals span from F♯₃ to D₄ in the song.[19]

It was certified Gold in Germany in 1990.[20]

Larry Flick from Billboard commented, "Don't miss the exceptional "Tom's Diner", by DNA Featuring Suzanne Vega." He noted that the Brit outfit "has placed a slammin' Soul II Soul-flavored swing instrumental" underneath Vega's song.[21] He also described it as "indelibly infectious."[22] Columbia Daily Spectator called it a "surprise hit".[23] Marisa Fox from Entertainment Weekly said the dance beat is "mesmerizing".[24] Music & Media wrote that "the lonely vocal part is perfectly complemented by the Steely Dan type horns and the grinding hip-hop beat. A fine version."[25] Music Week put the song at number-one in their Top 10 list, Pick Of The Year - Dance.[26] The Network Forty commented that "the connection of Vega's sensuously soft voice and the unlikely rhythm (for her music, anyway) is startlingly vibrant, and its jazziness is an instant ear-catcher."[27] Smash Hits said that remixes like this one "end up sounding far better than the originals and the result is rather refreshing."[28]

A music video was made to accompany the song. It was directed by Gareth Roberts.[29]

CD maxi

1. "Tom's Diner" (7-inch A) – 3:47
2. "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega – 2:39
3. "Tom's Diner" (a cappella) by Suzanne Vega – 2:08
4. "Tom's Diner" (12-inch A) – 5:20

7-inch single

1. "Tom's Diner" – 3:47
2. "Tom's Diner" (a cappella) by Suzanne Vega – 2:08

12-inch maxi

1. "Tom's Diner" (remix) – This version, containing a piano with a solo part, has never been released on CD or MP3 yet.
2. "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega
3. "Tom's Diner" (a cappella) by Suzanne Vega

Cassette single

1. "Tom's Diner" 7-inch version by Suzanne Vega (side 1)
2. "Tom's Diner" 12-inch version by Suzanne Vega (side 2)

1. "Tom's Diner"
2. "Tom's Diner" (Leu Leu Land Remix)
3. "Tom's Diner" (Hibell Remix)

The song spawned a number of hip hop, dance, and rock remixes and remakes from artists such as Peter Behrens (drummer from Trio) and Bingo Hand Job, a whimsical one-time collaboration between Billy Bragg and R.E.M.. It was also sampled in songs by Public Enemy, Nikki D, Twin Hype, Yo Gotti and Lil' Kim, among other hip hop acts.

In 1991, Vega, noting the huge number of remakes of the song, released Tom's Album, a compilation of different versions of the song, spanning a variety of musical genres, including a parody by Mark Jonathan Davis[80] that worked in references to I Dream of Jeannie called "Jeannie's Diner", which Nick-at-Nite would use to promote its airings of the show. The album also featured another DNA remix of one of her songs, "Rusted Pipe." On the album's sleeve, Vega wrote: "A small song about eating breakfast became a song about accidental pregnancy (Daddy's Little Girl – Nikki D.) and the recent war in the Gulf (Waiting at the Border). One version incorporates forgotten bits of pop culture (Jeannie's Diner). All of them surprised me; a couple made me wince. I include them anyway."[81]

In 2015, sound artist and composer Ryan Maguire[82] released the track "moDernisT"[83] (an anagram of "Tom's Diner") as a part of his project "The Ghost in the MP3".[84] "moDernisT" is composed exclusively of the sounds deleted during MP3 compression from the song "Tom's Diner", known as the mother of the MP3.[85] A detailed account of the techniques used to isolate the sounds deleted during MP3 compression, along with the conceptual motivation for the project, was published in the 2014 Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference.[86]

In 2020, English producer Robbie Doherty remixed the song with artist Keees, titling it "Pour the Milk," launching it to No. 44 on the UK Singles Chart.[87]

The song is sampled on "Centuries" by American rock band Fall Out Boy, released in 2014.[88]