Suzanne on Blood Makes Noise in connection with the album title:
"You could say 99.9F° is the temperature of feelings, of specific feelings. On "Blood Makes Noise", for example, the feelings that are being expressed are anxiety, fear, anger, hostility and resentment, in a sense. But when I refer to temperature, I mean the way you feel when you're aroused in some way, whether it's through fear, anger or love."
Interview with Fátima Castro Silva in "Urgent Whispers" (http://watermarks.vega.net/urgent_whispers/index.htm)

Suzanne explaining why Blood makes noise is open-ended:
"It's open-ended because it's about a moment, cause it's not about an issue.
[...]
It's a song about fear and it's a song about the fear of disclosing information, which a lot of the songs are about. It's a song that I can't entirely explain myself, because the attitude towards the doctor is extremely sarcastic and ironic. Here's someone who's an authority who's trying to help you and you're not being helpful. It has a sort of mocking tone to it."
Interview with Fátima Castro Silva in "Urgent Whispers" (http://watermarks.vega.net/)

Suzanne on why Blood Makes Noise sounds unconventional:
"If you have a song called "Blood Makes Noise" you have to make noise with it, you can't sing it softly, with a guitar and have pretty voices in the back. You have to use the vocabulary of the song. When I had originally conceived it, I had no music. And in the beginning, when I was first working with Mitchell, I was very nervous, because he had worked with all of these heroes of mine, like Elvis Costello. So we were sitting in a room and I was feeling like an idiot, because in the beginning you don't know if the songs are any good. So I was looking at him and I said "well, I have this song, it's kind of a weird song". Then he asked "how does it go?" and I replied "I don't have any music for it" and he said "well, just sing it". So I just sang it into the air (Suzanne sings the first two lines of "Blood Makes Noise"). I felt a little embarrassed but then I explained to him that I would like the song to sound like The Ramones, fast and nervous and with a lot of guitars. Mitchell listened to me but he threw that idea away. I didn't know that he had done that but he did. The next day I came in he already had the bass line and the crushing noise. For some reason it was funny to hear that bass line and that crushing noise with the music. It made me laugh and I thought that that was the right thing for that song, because it made me laugh and there was something about the way the music and the lyrics fitted together that was funny and sort of cynical but sarcastic at the same time. And I don't know why. It's one of those things that I would have to go and dissect it and analyze it. All I knew was that it made me laugh and it seemed good. So it was unintentional and I liked it. It fitted with my own sense of humour."
Interview with Fátima Castro Silva in "Urgent Whispers" (http://watermarks.vega.net/):

"Everyone has experience with doctors. That's a hard question, am I skeptical of doctors? I go to doctors. Yes, I am skeptical of doctors in certain way. I mean, I go to them like everyone else but I think there's a relationship between the doctors and the album and the fact that some of the characters on the album are abused for example. Usually the first signs of abuse you know for example if the child is abused, you go to the doctor and the doctor is the first one to pick up on the clues. And a lot of times the doctor can't or won't want to get involved. So, that's the link there. I don't have anything against doctors and the medical profession certainly." Suzanne Vega at The Learning Annex - TranscriptLearning Annex Discussion January 1995 http://www.suzannevega.com/about/1995/lannex1.htm

"And it's really a song about not being able to communicate with someone because of feeling anxiety and fear. That's what that song is about in a nutshell." Suzanne Discusses Tried and TrueSuzanne Discusses Each Song on Tried and True september, 1998 http://www.suzannevega.com/about/1998/triedandtrue.htm

For medical themes see 99.9F.