Regina Spektor: “I Guess My Destiny Was To Be The Outsider”
Regina Spektor has spoken to The Guardian about her early days making music, recording her new album during the pandemic and the inspiration behind her songs in a new interview. Spektor was speaking ahead of the release of her new album, Home, Before And After, which is out 24 June on Warners.
Looking back at he her early days in New York, a time when she was taken under the wing of Strokes producer Gordon Raphael, Regina reflected, “I guess my destiny was to be the outsider, but you look around and realise that it’s all made up of outsiders, really. Groups, scenes, all this stuff, it’s mythologised and organised later.”
Though her new album is full of typically lush, orchestral pop, Regina recorded it on her own but for producer John Congleton and engineer Ariel Shafir; the orchestra was in Macedonia. “This was the most alone recording I’ve ever done,” she says. “I was one of the Covid-safest people that anyone ever met, so I never even set foot in the control room. If the piano tuner came in, I would leave for three hours.” She sighs. “It was a whole thing.”
Regina went on to open up about her inspiration for song writing, “I used to feel a little bit sad when I realised that in our culture there was a big divide between fiction writers and truth writers. To me, fiction is a true vehicle for feelings and realisations about life. Because this place is very weird and mysterious and most of the time we have no idea what’s going on. Every once in a while we get a glimpse and then we realise, oh, actually that was the reverse image of a shrapnel of a tiny mirror that’s a million miles away. It’s very hard to be here, because you’re watching cruelty; you’re watching the next 100 years of war being born. If you wanted, your whole life could be a slow-motion horror. But at the same time it’s just so good here. There are so many wonderful things here and you can fill your days with them. I guess all of that ends up being in the music.”