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SINGAPORE - On April Fool’s Day, I found myself watching singer Suzanne Vega performing for the third time. The first was in 2008 when she came here in support of her album, Beauty & Crime, and performed with her band at the Esplanade Concert Hall. Then in 2012, she played an intimate set at the Esplanade Recital Studio, supported only by guitarist Gerry Leonard. And her April 1 gig - again at the Esplanade Recital Studio, again supported only by Leonard - appeared, initially, to be a repeat of her last concert.

But there was a palpable vibe in the venue and from the moment she struck the first chords of Marlene On The Wall, you knew that this show was going to be different. Perhaps it was the fact that this time round, she was here on the back of her new album, Tales From The Realm Of The Queen Of Pentacles (“It’s sounds very complicated, but it’s not, really,” she quipped), but Vega possessed a vigour that wasn’t quite there in her last show - good though that show was.

Of course, my fascination with Suzanne Vega began sometime in the late ’80s. I’d first heard of her thanks to her contribution to the Pretty In Pink soundtrack (I filched it from my sister, who bought the album because she was in love with Andrew McCarthy), that fantastic collection of the best in ’80s pop.

It had Echo And Bunnymen, The Smiths, New Order, The Psychedelic Furs, and there, in-between OMD and INXS, was Left Of Center, by Suzanne Vega, featuring Joe Jackson on piano. And I was hooked.

The haunting voice that greeted my ears sang of someone watching (even stalking?) someone else; an outsider who was at the same time part of a team; someone within yet without. Taken on its own, lyrics like “But I’m only in the outskirts/And in the fringes/On the edge and off the avenue” seem downright depressing. But coupled with the perky beat and percolating melody, it became an anthem for this youth, who really did feel like he was only in the fringes of his community at the time, as Life zoomed on by without remorse.

It was the story of my life, sung by a New Yorker singer from the folkie community. And I was totally floored.

A few months later, Luka came out. Like Left Of Center, it had gritty lyrics set to a poppy melody. It was a song about domestic abuse, and no, that didn’t happen in my family, but when you’re living in a HDB block, you hear things, some kind of trouble, some kind of fight. And while we had a tight community back in Toa Payoh, it really was a case of “just don’t ask me what it was”.

Luka, in my view, was the perfect pop song. Dark yet bright. Full of ups and downs. So I bought the single. LPs were still too expensive for me back then, so I bought the cassette version of Solitude Standing and devoured all the songs - Calypso, Gypsy, Ironbound/Fancy Poultry, Language, Tom’s Diner, In The Eye...

I only found out that Solitude Standing was in fact, her second album, after watching a concert on TV (Suzanne Vega at the Royal Albert Hall), wherein she played songs like Small Blue Thing, Straight Lines and Marlene On The Wall. Songs, I would find out, were actually on her self-titled debut album, which I duly sought and bought. Once again, I pored through the lyric sheet, with the thought that someone so many miles away was singing the songs of my soul - well, it felt like that. The Queen And The Soldier? That was me (soldier) and my school teacher (queen). Small Blue Thing? That was what I felt I was in school. Cracking? That was me.

Sure, I had no idea who Marlene Dietrich was at the time, but that line, “don’t give away the goods too soon”, has always resonated deep within me. (Maybe that’s why I’m such a Scrooge.) In the decades that followed, Suzanne Vega’s album would find a designated spot on my shelf - Days Of Open Hand, 99.9F, Nine Objects Of Desire, Songs In Red And Gray ... the lot. I even bought compilations and soundtracks like Deadicated: A Tribute To The Grateful Dead, Stay Awake: Various Interpretations Of Music From Vintage Disney Films, Dead Man Walking and Tower Of Song, mostly because there were Vega songs on it.

Now, almost 30 years after that debut, Vega was in the Recital Studio again, singing all those songs that I heard all those years ago. True, she focused on songs from her first two albums and Pentacles, skipping out songs that she did the last couple of times, although she threw in Caramel (from Nine Objects Of Desire) and Rosemary (from her greatest hits compilation).

Not that it meant that wasn’t a good show. Pentacles does in fact, seem like the third act of the trilogy that began with Suzanne Vega and continued with Solitude Standing. Vega goes into storyteller mode for Pentacles - and she told several anecdotes at the concert - which was what I really liked about her songs.

They were all stories and poetry set to music. And it worked great. There were no clunky statements like “She can’t sing/She can’t dance/But who cares, she walks like Rihanna” or “I wanna scream and shout” (repeat ad nauseum). Vega’s songs always took you on some journey and where you would end up, nobody quite knew.

Even today, when I listen to those songs, I get goosebumps. Literally. When Vega started singing Some Journey, I whooped with joy. I don’t know why, but that song has always struck a chord (C major?) in me. For me, Some Journey has always been the one song that really leapt out at me when I heard her first album for the first time. A song of what might have been, asking the all-important “what if?” It’s a song about potential, it’s a song about dreams, it’s a song about being in love, it’s a song about experiencing new Life adventures. Who doesn’t want that?

And at that show, I experienced that all over again. And I don’t know about you, but that’s what make shows like that - and the people who perform in those shows - so memorable.