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
It's always interesting to me to see people projecting things, like people would say, "This record is much more mature than your other record" and I would think, "Well, this record has more songs from when I was 18 on it than the other one."
I don't think about, "How does this song that has more of an electronic mix prefix to a song that has a full orchestra next to a song that has other things?" I just work on it as-needed.
Not everything in the world is easy or powerful.
I spent the '80s in the Soviet Union and when I came to America it was '89 and I was in an immigrant bubble and we didn't have MTV or cable, so I kind of discovered the '80s when I was already older, maybe in college. And I continued to have this romantic obsession with all those films and there's this sound I hear in my head and it's kind of this bittersweet romantic, dark sound.
I have this obsession with the '80s because I missed all of it.
Sometimes I make stuff, and even I don't like it. There's something about it that I don't really like, or annoys me. For whatever reason it needs to come out.
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.
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.
We don't have a lot of power in the world, right? We can only control so many things. It allows you to curate your own emotional and artistic intake of life.
I'm much more drawn to fiction, to short stories, and to plays, than I am to diarists.
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.
I have the coolest parents.
I have to work hard and organize myself so that I'm present and not a slacker.
I'm both kinds of a person; I have a side of me that's very light and very optimistic and finds everything surreal and hilarious, and then I have a side of me that's - I don't know what the right word is - tormented or just feels very overwhelmed.