Rolling Out a New Model Vega : Pop Music: The hot new face of 1987 finds life in the slow lane is more to her liking.

“We’re not having a hit! We’re not having a Top 10 hit!”

Singer Suzanne Vega sounded almost elated about what many pop artists would consider a disaster, as she sat on the patio of a West Hollywood hotel this week.

When Vega’s 1987 album “Solitude Standing” was released, she never expected huge success, but got it anyway. The single “Luka” shot up to No. 3, its narrative about a calloused but fragile abused boy catapulting Vega into the role of new folk icon and paving the way for Tracy Chapman and Michelle Shocked.

But after two months, Vega’s new album “Days of Open Hand” has stalled on Billboard’s pop chart, hanging on this week at No. 79, while the single “Book of Dreams” is not even in the Top 100.

“The whole game plan changes,” said the New Yorker, just a couple of weeks shy of her 31st birthday. “It looks like it’s going to be a long slow thing instead of a long fast one.”

And that suits her fine.

“I was very nervous in 1987 because I was wondering if everything was closing in,” she said. “First of all, I was wondering if it was going to last. Because something that’s based on one song like that can easily not last. But I was also afraid that it would last, and that it would sort of get blown out of proportion to where I was a cartoon character.”

That nearly happened, at least figuratively. The cool detachment of Vega’s songs and the awkward reserve of her stage manner earned her critics as well as fans. Comedian/actress Sandra Bernhard went so far in at least one interview as to deride Vega’s style, calling her Suzanne Vegas .

But as she prepared for concerts on Friday at the Wiltern Theatre and on Sunday at the Ventura Theatre, the singer was anything but icy, laughing easily and discussing anything and everything. That character is also evident on the new album, whose central theme is the desire to participate rather than observe.

“I listened to a lot of criticism I’d gotten, and I got a lot of it,” she said. “The main thing that bothered me was the word precious popping up in all the reviews. I was thinking, ‘What kind of things are precious? Small things that you hold to yourself, like diamonds and little kittens.’ ”

She clutched a tightly closed hand to her chest to illustrate her point.

“And at that point I felt I didn’t have anything to hold to myself. I’d written all the songs that I’d written and didn’t have any new ones. I didn’t have any direction that made logical sense to me as far as I could see. So I had to forget all about it. I even had to forget about the success of ‘Luka’ and just go ahead with what I thought was vital.

“That’s partly what accounts for the title, ‘Days of Open Hand,’ as opposed to the attitude ‘I’m going to keep this to myself ‘cause it’s mine and you can’t have it and it’s too good for you.’ ”

But the success of “Luka” gave her the confidence to do one thing that was at least as significant in her life as having the hit: She sought and contacted her natural father, of whom she had been unaware until she was 9.

“The same week that ‘Luka’ went to No. 3, I decided to hire a detective, and then we found him,” she said.

She waited to contact him until she came off the road, sending him a Christmas card. To her delight, he was eager to get to know her (he had no idea that his daughter was the person whose song he was hearing on the radio) and sent her family pictures and mementos, including photos and clippings about Vega’s natural grandmother, who had been a drummer in an all-woman, barnstorming band in the ‘20s and ‘30s.

“It’s like all these things that I thought were important were coming true,” she said. “In some sense, I suppose, that taught me not to be so fatalistic.”

The result is that Suzanne Vega, 1990 model, is a looser, more take-it-as-it-comes person than the stiffer one her fans had gotten to know.

“I’ve discovered things that are actually fun,” she said. “Like painting is fun to do. And snorkeling. I actually took some vacations and had fun. And I started giving parties, which was a new thing. I had a great Christmas party last year. They Might Be Giants came, and then they gave a New Year’s party and I had a lot of fun at that. Stayed until 7 in the morning. I was the last guest to leave.”