Regina Spektor

Regina Spektor (b. February 18, 1980) is a singer-songwriter and pianist. Born in Moscow, Soviet Union, she moved with her family to the Bronx, New York, at age nine. Her music is associated with the anti-folk scene centering around New York City's East Village.

Spektor's idiosyncratic songs generally take the form of character studies, and are thus much like short stories in song. She states that she has written hundreds of songs, but that she rarely writes any of them down. Unlike the work of many singer-songwriters, they are not usually autobiographical, but based on scenarios drawn from her imagination. They range from playful to introspective in character, showing influences from classical, folk, Russian music, and hip hop music. Her earliest work also shows the influence of jazz and blues, drawing comparisons to her contemporary Fiona Apple (also a singer-pianist). She has stated that she works hard to ensure that each of her songs has its own musical style, rather than trying to develop a distinctive style for her music as a whole.

Spektor also explores the various timbres of her voice, including a breathy, angelic high register and a Billie Holiday-like lower register that she often allows to break into a trumpet-like tone quality. She often uses a jazzy vibrato and sliding tones in her voice's middle register. She also uses a variety of rather unorthodox techniques, such as verses composed entirely of buzzing noises made with the lips, beatbox-style flourishes in the middle of ballads, or the use of a drum stick to tap rhythms on the body of the piano, or a chair.

Her lyrics (which she usually sings in English, though sometimes including a few words of French or Russian, and the occasional verse of Latin) are equally eclectic, frequently drawing on unusual intellectual and literary references, (such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in "Poor Little Rich Boy," The Little Prince in "Baobabs," and Boris Pasternak in "Après Moi"), further setting her music apart from mainstream folk music. Many of her songs are narrative, use a mixture of styles and techniques, and often start with a seemingly simple piano riff. She uses a strong New York accent on some words, which she states is due to her love of New York and its culture.