Entertainment
The Meaning Behind Britney's New Cover Song
You don't want to miss this: Britney Spears' "Tom's Diner" cover premiered on Friday, and it's going to introduce a whole new generation of listeners to Suzanne Vega's 1990 classic. Because the song tells such a unique story (and has an atypical structure for pop music), I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be wondering over the next few weeks: What do the "Tom's Diner" lyrics mean? That's a good question. Fortunately for us, Vega shared some details about the track's conception in a 2008 essay for The New York Times. Fancy that!
According to Vega's essay, she wrote "Tom's Diner" in 1982 (though she "got the idea" for it in 1981). The song's title was inspired by Tom's Restaurant in Manhattan, a place she used to frequent while attending Barnard College. (Fun fact: An exterior shot of Tom's Restaurant is famously used to represent the fictional "Monk's Café" on the NBC sitcom Seinfeld). Here, Vega explains how the tune came to be:
I have a photographer friend, Brian Rose, who has taken pictures of the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the Berlin Wall. He told me once long ago that he felt as though he saw the world through a pane of glass. This struck me as romantic and alienated, and I wanted to write a song from this viewpoint.
I had been taking classes at Barnard with titles like “The Dramatic Monologue.” I was in Tom’s and I thought it would be fun to write a song that was like a little film, where the main character sees all these things but can’t respond to any of it unless it relates to him directly. ...
Check out Spears' "Tom's Diner" cover below.
Is "Tom's Diner" based on Vega's real-life experiences as a customer of Tom's Restaurant? Yes and no. For example, she mentions in her essay that the part of the song about reading about an actor's death in the newspaper is true. However, she also mentions that the part about looking out the window and seeing a woman "straightening her stockings" in the rain (which actually isn't used in Spears' cover) is not. So, there you go. "Tom's Diner" seems to be a mix of both fiction and non-fiction.
Check out the full lyrics to Britney Spears' "Tom's Diner" cover below. (Note: The strange "spoken bridge" section does not appear in Vega's original version of the song, which can be heard here.)
CHORUS:
Doo doo doo doo, doo, da-doo doo
Doo doo doo doo, doo, da-doo doo
Doo doo doo doo, doo, da-doo doo
Doo doo doo doo, doo, da-doo doo
1st VERSE:
I am sitting
In the morning
At the diner
On the corner
I am waiting
At the counter
For the man
To pour the coffee
And he fills it
Only halfway
And before
I even argue
He is looking
Out the window
At somebody
Coming in
CHORUS x 2
2nd VERSE:
"It is always
Nice to see you"
Says the man
Behind the counter
To the woman
Who has come in
She is shaking
Her umbrella
And I look
The other way
As they are kissing
Their hellos
And I'm pretending
Not to see them
Instead
I pour the milk
CHORUS x 2
SPOKEN BRIDGE:
Everybody's welcome
Come on, come on in
Sit yourself down
The fun never ends
Love is the drug that makes you wanna drink
'Til the morning after
3rd VERSE:
I open
Up the paper
There's a story
Of an actor
Who had died
While he was drinking
It was no one
I had heard of
And I'm turning
To the horoscope
And looking
For the funnies
When I'm feeling
Someone watching me
And so
I raise my head
CHORUS x 4
