LOVER, Beloved is a studio collection of ten songs from the musical Lover, Beloved: An Evening With Carson Cullers, 20th century writer and classically trained pianist to boot.

The play shows McCullers in 1941, when The Heart Is A lonely Hunter catapulted her to literary fame, and then shortly before her death as she looks back on her life and work.

New York City singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega first read a McCullers short story as a teenager, saying to herself, "If I ever want to play a character in the future, I could play this woman". And so here comes ten Vega songs wherein she inhabits McCullers' psyche to chart the life of a woman who, affronted by the politics and racism of her native American South, moved to New York in her early twenties.

Co-writing with theatrical collaborator Duncan Sheik, Vega's ninth studio album distils McCullers' philosophies on gender and love. "She tried to live them and paid the price," posits Vega, whose typically astute compositions make for a fitting tribute.