Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	(84/100)
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
BBC Music	(positive)
Billboard	(positive)
The Boston Globe	(positive)
Entertainment Weekly	A-
musicOMH
New York Magazine	(positive)
The New York Times	(positive)
PopMatters
Stylus	B
Under the Radar
USA Today

Beauty & Crime is the seventh studio album release by New York-based singer/songwriter and musician Suzanne Vega. It is her first album of new material since 2001's Songs in Red and Gray and is also her first for Blue Note Records. It was released on July 17, 2007. Beauty & Crime won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, on February 11, 2008.

Following lukewarm commercial success for her prior two albums, 1996's Nine Objects of Desire and Songs in Red and Gray, A&M Records ended their lengthy contract with Vega (she had signed in 1983) with the release of the more commercially successful hits package Retrospective in 2003.

Between then and 2006, Vega embarked on a hectic and extensive touring schedule and performed a number of the songs from Beauty & Crime, in their early forms, during concerts, including "Unbound," "Edith Wharton's Figurines," and "New York is a Woman."

The album was recorded in New York City between November 10-November 27, 2006, with further recording work commencing in England in January 2007.

All songs written by Suzanne Vega.

Vega has made the following comments on the album's songs:

...
Wikipedia