Regina Spektor
Regina Spektor
Regina Ilyinichna Spektor is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She was born in the Soviet Union where she began classical training on the piano at the age of 6. When she was 9 years old, her family emigrated to the United States where she continued her classical training into her teenage years; she began to write original songs shortly thereafter...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth18 February 1980
CityMoscow, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
I remember somebody handed me Siddhartha when I was I think 18, and I started to read it and I just really didn't like it, and I left it and it was just gathering dust for years. Then maybe five years later, the world shook as I read it.
There's an artist that I listened to for the first time, and I really didn't like them. I had some kind of adverse reaction, and later, it became my favorite thing.
You ask a person what their personal favorite song on the album is, and it's literally the one with the least amount of listens if you looked at the statistics of it.
I have my own tastes and I have my my own... like, I dunno. I think it's really subjective; something that I think is a great song, is unlistenable to somebody else, which I've come to realise.
No one laughs at God in a hospital,
I'm much more into someone who is telling stories than somebody who is writing a record about their breakup. It's just more interesting for me.
Maybe you should kiss someone who is nice, or lick a rock, or both.
A man destined to hang can never drown
I started to write before I went to SUNY Purchase music conservatory. As an audition I submitted what I now think are really awful songs, but I guess they saw something in them.
There's something about trying to know when you really need to protect yourself, or else you're not going to get anything done, and sometimes to be really uncomfortable or agitated or annoyed or bored. Boredom is so important.
Yeah. My singing and my songs were very influenced by all of that. People would come up to me and ask, Is that a Billie Holiday song? I'd say, No, it's my song. The lyrics would be in my style, but the songs would be very jazzy.
This is how it works You're young until you're not You love until you don't You try until you can't You laugh until you cry You cry until you laugh And everyone must breathe Until their dying breath.
I hate picking favourite books. I usually tend to stay away from all the 'top record' and 'favourite song' and 'favourite book', and I just think it doesn't do any good for anybody.
When I think of my art tribe - you know, my peeps - there are certain people who are autobiographers that I really love. But for the most part, overwhelmingly, my tribes are the surrealists and the storytellers, in song and literature.