The earliest piece of the puzzle can be traced all the way back to November 1981, thanks to this set of lines: “I open up the paper, there’s a story of an actor / Who had died while he was drinking, it was no one I had heard of / And I’m turning to the horoscope, and looking for the funnies.” By looking at all of the New York daily papers operating in 1981 and cross-checking for comic sections and front stories, readers isolated the star in question as William Holden, an Academy Award winner who died alone and drunk in his apartment. The New York Post published the story on November 18, 1981, but Vega didn’t write the song until 1982.

“Tom’s Diner” is released for the first time. The song is part of the first Fast Folk Musical Magazine collection, which is released with the goal of promoting “noncommercial artistic music.” Its parent organization was Fast Folk, a Greenwich Village collective of folk musicians who had banded together in the wake of relative unpopularity in the early ‘80s. Vega was the magazine’s first subscription manager.

Vega releases her eponymous debut album, which goes on to achieve critical acclaim and a platinum sales certification in the UK.

Solitude Standing, Vega’s second album, is released — and it’s an even bigger hit than her first. “Tom’s Diner” appears twice on the album: first in its original a cappella version, and again as an album closing reprise. The album spawns one hit single, “Luka.” “Tom’s Diner” makes a small dent in the UK singles chart.

Seinfeld premieres on NBC as The Seinfeld Chronicles. One of the show’s most frequented locations is Monk’s Café, a diner where the characters meet and eat. The exterior shots of Monk’s Café are taken from Tom’s Restaurant, the very same “Tom’s Diner” Vega frequented almost a decade earlier.

Recording as DNA, British electronic producers Nick Batt and Neal Slateford sample Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” vocal and turn her into the centerpiece of a moody, proto-trip-hop remix. After trying and failing to contact her label, they release the song to British clubs and record stores as “Oh Suzanne!” Vega’s label finds out, but instead of pursuing legal action, they meet with them and buy the rights to the song, turning it into “Tom’s Diner” by DNA featuring Suzanne Vega. It becomes a major international hit and Vega’s second top 10 hit in the US, and it revitalizes her career.

The MPEG-2 audio compression format — otherwise known as MP3 — achieves international standardization. One of the driving forces behind the format is German audio engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg, who uses “Tom’s Diner” as his test subject. “I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm… Somewhere down the corridor a radio was playing ‘Tom’s Diner.’ I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a cappella voice,” recounted Brandenburg in a 2000 Business 2.0 feature. Brandenburg and his team listen to the song hundreds of times, refining their algorithm until Vega’s original and compressed voices are almost indistinguishable. Vega’s unknown role in the format’s creation earns her the moniker “the Mother of the MP3.”

This is the period where “Tom’s Diner” starts to transform from a popular hit single into an inextricable part of our musical fabric. Samples from the song started to appear in hip-hop and R&B singles, including a few from female artists who stood at the genre’s vanguard. Las Vegas trio 702 opened their 1996 debut No Doubt with “Get Down Like Dat,” a Missy Elliott co-write.

Timbaland remixed Aaliyah’s “Hot Like Fire” for its 1997 single release and tossed in a “Tom’s Diner” adlib.

Destiny’s Child included “Know That” on the Australian and European versions of their 1998 debut. (Yes, that means you can hear Beyoncé sing the “Tom’s Diner” melody.) None of these songs were major hits in their own right, but they were evidence of the staying power “Tom’s Diner” was starting to acquire, and they would influence another generation of young musicians more than a decade later.

Before the long list of production credits and The Grey Album, Danger Mouse was just another struggling producer throwing mashups together in the hopes of uncovering a magical reaction. One of those mashups involves “Tom’s Diner” and 50 Cent’s immortal “In Da Club,” included with four other songs on a rare, unofficial 2005 vinyl release called The Early Versions: 2001-2003.

Buried on the second disc of posthumous compilation Best of 2Pac, “Dopefiend’s Diner” finds the rapper interpolating that familiar vocal melody for a song about a restaurant that’s a little less safe than the one Vega frequented.

This is where the third generation of “Tom’s Diner” starts to take shape: artists vaguely familiar with both DNA and Vega’s massive hit and the wave of hip-hop/R&B songs that sampled it, folding the song’s melody into their own work. Drake and producer Boi-1da snap it up for the beat of “Juice,” included on 2009 mixtape Heartbreak Drake Part 2. (This is the sort of aesthetic choice that won Drake’s eclectic ear acclaim long before he was one of the world’s most popular artists.)

The song’s re-emergence wasn’t limited to traditional hip-hop, either. A few years later, young British producer Evian Christ would take Vega’s original vocal for use in “Payo Rent,” a brooding, ambient piece of electronic music. He would work on Kanye West’s landmark Yeezus the very next year.

Finally, this is where we’re at now: something approaching renewed omnipresence, the product of 30 years of popularity and digestion. Fall Out Boy sampled “Tom’s Diner” for last year’s “Centuries,” their first top 10 hit in seven years.

Timbaland returned to the well for a sample used on Fox’s smash drama Empire, Hakeem showcase “Nothing But a Number.”