Songfacts®:

• Suzanne Vega's 2025 album Flying With Angels, her first in 11 years, finds the singer-songwriter grappling with resilience, loss, and the twists of fate that life throws at us. "Witch" was inspired by a harrowing chapter in Vega's life: her husband, spoken-word poet and former trial lawyer Paul Mills, suffered multiple strokes after a severe bout of Covid. Vega personifies the cruel randomness of his illness as a "witch," a way to wrestle with the anxiety, helplessness, and vigilance that followed.
  
  "I was there in the room," she told The Arts Fuse, "and I thought, 'Oh my God, what's happening?'... You would think a witch had put a spell on this man. Since I wanted a dialogue with someone or something other than just the doctors, I started to have this vision of a witch who had singled him out. It gave me a way to express my feelings."
• Vega wrote most of the Flying With Angels tracks with her longtime guitarist and producer Gerry Leonard, who also worked with David Bowie. The duo's sessions were steeped in ritual and quiet domestic intimacy. "Gerry would make me a cup of tea or two, and I'd pour my heart out about everything that was going on," Vega told Hot Press. "Then we'd have lunch and some more tea. That would be two hours into the session, and then we'd start fooling around with writing ideas."
• Throughout the album, Vega's lyrics navigate struggle and recovery, blending personal experience with larger reflections on resilience. From "Chambermaid" to "Witch," the songs feel like conversations with life itself: sometimes tender, sometimes fierce, and always candid.