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Not to be confused with British vocalist Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie & the Banshees fame, Susie Suh is an American singer/songwriter -- specifically, a Korean-American singer/songwriter -- from Los Angeles. Suh, who was 25 in 2005, is young enough to be the daughter of Siouxsie Sioux (who was born Susan Dallion on May 27, 1958, and adopted Siouxsie Sioux as a stage name when she founded Siouxsie & the Banshees in 1976 -- several years before Susie Suh was even born). Besides, Suh sounds nothing like Sioux stylistically; while Siouxsie & the Banshees were pioneers of punk, new wave, and goth rock, Suh favors an adult alternative/folk-rock approach along the lines of Fiona Apple, Sarah McLachlan, and former 'Til Tuesday singer turned solo star Aimee Mann (three of the singer/songwriters she has often been compared to). Suh (who plays guitar and piano and has cited Joni Mitchell and Beth Gibbons as some of her major influences) writes highly introspective and personal lyrics, many of them of them on the melancholy side; the southern Californian has a world-weary outlook and deals with her share of darker emotions, which is definitely something she has in common with Apple. br /br /Although Suh has lived in the United States her entire life, both of her parents are immigrants who moved to southern California from Korea in the '60s. Suh's involvement with music began when she was only eight and joined a Korean children's choir, whose repertoire ranged from traditional Korean songs to American pop. At 13, Suh left Los Angeles for New Hampshire, where she attended a boarding school and did her share of songwriting during her adolescent years; Suh was around 17 when she recorded a six-song EP, pressed 1,000 copies onto CDs, and managed to sell about 700 of them to her schoolmates. After reaching adulthood, Suh attended Brown University in Rhode Island (where she obtained a degree in English), but spent as much time as she could visiting New York City and performing in Lower Manhattan clubs. A career in music is not something that Suh's ambitious parents encouraged -- in fact, they tried to talk her out of it and encouraged her to go into a more stable, less volatile line of work. Music, they asserted, should be nothing more than a hobby for Suh. But her parents' lack of support didn't discourage the L.A. native; if anything, it inspired her to persevere and work even harder at having a career in music. "Your Battlefield," one of Suh's songs, was inspired by her career-related disagreements with her parents. br /br /In 2003, Suh signed with Epic/Sony; she ended up working with Glen Ballard, a well-known producer/songwriter/arranger whose lost list of credits ranges from No Doubt to Paula Abdul to Alanis Morissette -- it was Ballard who produced Morissette's 1995 blockbuster, Jagged Little Pill. At first, Ballard only agreed to produce a few songs for Suh, but he was so impressed with her work that he ended up producing her entire debut album (a self-titled CD that Epic released in April 2005). ~ Alex Henderson, All Music Guide |
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