Suzanne and I

Album: Anna Calvi (2011)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Half Italian singer/guitarist Anna Calvi grew up being exposed to a multitude of genres of music by her music-loving father. She cites the classical composers Ravel and Debussy among her influences and her music has been described as "brooding melodramatic goth-pop." The intensely romantic nature of Calvi's songs, however, is "more abstract" than the one-dimensional eroticism of most pop, she told The Guardian: "Suzanne and I, for example, is about falling asleep, meeting someone in your dream, and never waking up. It's actually about death."
  • Calvi told the NME about her filmic vision, which ensures that the burgeoning drama of tracks like this one haunt long after they've stopped playing. "What usually happens is I listen to a piece of music or I watch a film," she explained, "and I feel really moved by it and it sort of compels me to create something. I feel it in my stomach and then I record it. The melody and the lyrics come out simultaneously. And, of course, after that I sculpt it, but the essence of the song is kind of there crystallised when it first appears out of me."
  • English musician and producer Brian Eno (he was the man twiddling the knobs on Coldplay's Viva La Vida) sung backing vocals on this track.
  • Calvi told The Observer that she drew on My Winnipeg, a surrealist-inflected feature film about director Guy Maddin's home town, for this song. She explained: "There's a film called My Winnipeg about a guy who really wants to leave a town but he can't because everyone keeps falling asleep. It's a really dreamlike film with surreal images of frozen horses in white snow. I had that in mind when I wrote 'Suzanne and I.'"

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Bill Withers

Bill WithersSongwriter Interviews

Soul music legend Bill Withers on how life experience and the company you keep leads to classic songs like "Lean On Me."

Curt Kirkwood of Meat Puppets

Curt Kirkwood of Meat PuppetsSongwriter Interviews

The (Meat)puppetmaster takes us through songs like "Lake Of Fire" and "Backwater," and talks about performing with Kurt Cobain on MTV Unplugged.

Song Cities

Song CitiesMusic Quiz

Nirvana, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen are among those who wrote songs with cities that show up in this quiz.

John Lee Hooker

John Lee HookerSongwriter Interviews

Into the vaults for Bruce Pollock's 1984 conversation with the esteemed bluesman. Hooker talks about transforming a Tony Bennett classic and why you don't have to be sad and lonely to write the blues.

Tom Waits Lyrics Quiz

Tom Waits Lyrics QuizMusic Quiz

Pool balls, magpies and thorns without roses - how well do you know your Tom Waits lyrics?

Chris Rea

Chris ReaSongwriter Interviews

It took him seven years to recover from his American hit "Fool (If You Think It's Over)," but Chris Rea became one of the top singer-songwriters in his native UK.