Notes:
Suzanne always refers to this song as a "folky"
one. It's basically meant to be a ballad. [Ed.]
Suzanne on the evolution
of the ideas behind the song:
""The Queen and The Soldier" was one where, again, I had
been circling for months. At first it was an "Alice In Wonderland"
kind of song with a red queen and a white queen, and they were
living in the same castle and they were going to have a fight,
and I thought, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
I will not tolerate this scene anymore."
[...]
"So then I got rid of one of the queens and had the queen
by herself in the castle. Again, this takes months of circling.
Then when I had the soldier come to the door, the whole thing
seemed to happen in front of my face as though I had nothing
to do with it. And all the details were right there and you
know you've really got it when everything starts to rhyme of
its own accord. And the rhythms and the rhymes just seem to
be right there. And it seems inevitable. And you're kind of
held in the grip of this for a few hours. For two or three hours
you're just held by this and you have to finish it. You can't
just leave it. You're completely absorbed by this thing. And
it seems to be taking place in front of you as though you're
watching it. It's a very peculiar thing. And it's wonderful
when you feel it. And later you look back and think, "How did
I do that?" And it's almost as though you didn't do it. And
it's very scary, because you're sure it's never going to happen
again."
Interview with Paul Zollo in Song Talk, Vol. 2, #17, Spring 1992, also published in "Language", 5:1 August 1992, (http://www.vega.net/songtal2.htm) trancription by Steve Zwanger
"I had been thinking about this song for months and months,
and when I finally sat down to write, it came out in rhyme and
in meter, and in surprising ways. Ways that I hadn't expected.
The rhymes would suggest themselves to me, that's the way it
seemed. It's hard to say exactly what inspired this song. I
know that I wanted to write a song about a woman who was in
power and it's hard to find a symbol for someone like that,
expecially in America. So I chose the queen to do that. There
are details in it that were influenced by things that were happening
around me at the time, but I can't really tell you where the
idea came from. The original idea was that I had two queens
that were fighting each other and then I got rid of one of them
because it seemed like a stupid idea. Once I got one of the
queens out of there and put the battle outside the castle, then
that made more sense. Then once I had the soldier come to the
door, the whole thing unfolded itself. It took me months though
to get to the point where the whole thing would clarify itself."
The Performing Songwriter Magazine Interview,
by Bill DeMain (http://www.vega.net/perfsong.htm)
Concerning the line "And
she said I've swallowed a secret, burning thread" Suzanne
said in the same interview:
"That's the line that means a lot of different things to
me, because it's the one line that doesn't make logical sense.
People don't swallow threads. That comes from a lot of different
sources. One source was that I had a cat who would chew the
bottom off the curtains. She did in fact swallow a thread and
she had to be put to sleep around that time. The other thing
is that, sometimes in your life, I think, you may have a secret;
and if you swallow it, if you keep it to yourself, that's what
it feels like. Or I used to think of relationships between people
as threads, so if there's one that's secret and has a certain
poisonous character to it, then you keep it to yourself, you
swallow it. I think that's really the deeper meaning of what
I meant. She swallowed something that was hurting her. And I
had something like that in my own life."
The Performing Songwriter Magazine Interview,
by Bill DeMain (http://www.vega.net/perfsong.htm)
"The Queen and the Soldier is a strange song for me because it seems
to work on a variety of levels. I still haven't figured that one out
yet. I don't know what it means to me, yet. I feel a very strong
sympathy with both characters. Obviously, I like the soldier better
than the queen; I think most people do. I feel a very strong
identification with both characters. Some people want to know if that's
my idea of romance, which it certainly is not! I mean, I'm not crazy...
in that way, anyway. To me, that was a song about power. It was a song
about power and the misuse of power and how people hang on to it,
no matter what, even if it means that they are ultimately unhappy and
suffering because of it. Yeah, I'm sure I have something in mind, but
I don't know what it is."
Generation Magazine, December 9 1986, Suzanne Vega Interview, by Allan Rousselle
