Vinyl Release

While the sleeve notes on the original album list a clutch of studios, most of the work on Solitude Standing was done at Woodstock's Bearsville Studios and New York's RPM Studios, with Steve Addabbo and Lenny Kaye in the production seats.

Suzanne Vega felt that although they did a good job, both Addabbo and Kaye were still somewhat inexperienced at the time of Solitude Standing. 'We were all sort of hashing it out in the studio,' she has said, 'so when I listen to those records, even though they were the most successful ones, I'm not always that happy with how they came out'.

One indisputable problem on the production side was that, as Vega has acknowledged, 'I'd spent all these years singing alone with the guitar and I don't have a big voice. In the studio my producers were respectful and wouldn't do anything that might obscure the vocal and the guitar. But I wanted a tougher sound and I ended up sitting in the recording booth with Shelly Yakus who mixed the album, and I had to tell him, "Please, bring out the drums" because I felt the drums on the first album were timid and shy. So Shelly brought up the drums and the vocal and crafted the mix from there'.

This, however, seems to contradict Addabbo's recollection of events, because in 2016 he said that, if Suzanne had had her way, '"Luka" would have been her, and her acoustic guitar. That record might not have gotten the widespread pop attention. Did I know that song was going to be that big? Absolutely not. Did I know we had a crack at that song being at least commercial enough? I did. And that's why we went for the arrangement we did... Yet she was like, "Hmm, why are those drums so loud?"'.