Cosmic Harmony
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Regina Ilyinichna Spektor was born in Moscow in 1980. She grew up in a family were music was very important. Her father was a violinist and her mother was a professor at a Russian musical college. At an early age Regina taught herself to play piano and her love for music only grew stronger after being exposed to English rock music. She cites The Beatles and Queen as her two biggest influences growing up.
((Regina- age six))
Her family left the Soviet Union when Regina was 9 years old and they were forced to leave behind her piano. Her parents almost decided not to move at all because of Regina's love for the piano. Following their emigration from the USSR the Spektor family jumped from country to country settling in Austria and Italy temporarily before eventually arriving in the United States and settling in the Bronx section of New York.
While in New York, Regina would complete her education and study classical piano. She was forced to leave her piano in Russia but she found a piano she was allowed to practice on in the basement of her synagogue.
Although Regina was only studying classical piano she was becoming increasingly interesting in other forms of music such as punk, hip-hop, and further exploring rock. She informally wrote songs in her adolescent years. She would make up songs, hum melodies, and sing lyrics that just popped into her head as she just went about her day and in her teen years the other kids took notice of her talent and Regina realized that she had the the potential to be a very adept songwriter. She wrote several a capella song over the years but it wasn't until she was about 18 that she actually started to put her lyrics to music, i.e. the piano.
Regina took her songs to the cafes, colleges, and galleries of New York and slowly but surely she caught people's attention and built up a loyal local fanbase. Because of her increasing popularity Regina released the self released albums "11:11" in 2001 and "Songs" the following year.
Word of mouth got around and in 2004 Regina Spektor signed a recording contract with Warner Brothers where they immediately jumped on distributing Regina's third album "Soviet Kitsch" which she had originally self released in late 2003. "Soviet Kitsch" was well received by critics but didn't chart anywhere. It's followup however would provide the biggest hit of Regina's career....
In 2006, after a couple years of touring, Regina's forth album "Begin to Hope" was released. The album debuted at #70 on the Billboard charts but quickly rocketed up to the top 20 after the success of the second single (the first single was "On The Radio") "Fidelity". "Begin to Hope" has sold over a million copies since it's release.
After two consecutive years of touring to support "Begin to Hope", Regina finally returned to the studio to record it's follow up. "Far" was recorded over nearly a year long period. The lead single "Laughing With" was released a month before "Far" was. It received radio airplay but failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 or anywhere else. When "Far" was finally released in June 2009 it debuted at #30 in the UK, #19 in Canada, and the very impressive #3 in the US all without a charting single.
Musically Regina's style is tricky to define. In her songs many different styles can be easily heard such as folk, punk rock, traditional Jewish and Russian music, hip hop, jazz, rock, and classical music. The reason for this is that she says that she wants each of her songs to have it's own style instead of developing a signature sound for herself. She also very rarely writes down any of her lyrics or music. She says this is because she really doesn't aim to write songs so much as they just sort of write themselves. Another interesting trait of her songs is that they are very often first person short stories of characters that flowed from Regina's imagination and theses characters are very eclectic to say the very least.
Regina is personally one of my favorite female singers. She has a broad vocal range and showcases in many of her songs and makes prominent use of unorthodox vocal techniques such as beat boxing and tongue clicks. She also plays around with pronunciation often which she says is a throwback to when she used to listen to English music in her youth when she didn't understand the language. In addition to all of that she also has a very unique accent over some words which is a blend of her Russian and New York up bringing. When I first heard her I mistook that as a lisp.
So to close out my opening post I'd like to flat out say that Regina Spektor is a woman who paints vividly colorful and original scenes and images with her own musical style and I hold her as one of my favorite female artists.
Her music speaks far more far her than I can say.
I've honestly never heard Songs or 11:11 but I do proudly own Soviet Kitsch, Begin To Hope SE and Far! All great stuff and you pretty much pigeonholed all the best ones off of Begin To Hope and Far! I LOVE Laughing With and On The Radio! One question though! Why no love for:
Though "Us" is my favorite song from "Soviet Kitsch". I also like:
