While My Guitar Gently WeepsRegina Spektor

Regina Spektor

Regina Spektor is a Russian-born, Bronx-raised singer-songwriter who rose to prominence in New York’s anti-folk scene in the early 2000s. After 3 self-released albums, she signed with Sire Records in 2004 and released her first record produced with the resources of a major label. The result, 2006’s Begin to Hope, achieved Gold status with popular singles such as “Fidelity” and “Better.” Her following two albums, Far and What We Saw from the Cheap Seats, each debuted at number 3 on the Billboard charts. She is currently best known for creating the opening theme for Neflix’s Orange Is The New Black, “You’ve Got Time.” The song was nominated for a Grammy in 2014.

As a woman who grew up with Russian and Hebrew but claims to have learned how to express herself in English, Spektor has an instinctive grasp of the versatility of language and music. Spektor is best known for writing story-songs that connect back to her Russian-Jewish roots and her classical piano training, but like other anti-folk singers, Regina Spektor displays a freeness in her musicality that defies genre pretensions and formulas. This shines through in her lyrical obsession with the phonetics of her words, emphasizing clicks, glottal stops, and alliterations in a way that turns her voice into both a melodic and a percussive instrument.

For the majority of her childhood, Spektor studied classical piano and had no aspirations to compose music of her own. However, she gradually became aware that her tendency to improvise vocalizations and stories in her free time could be combined with her skills on the piano to create music that expressed her personality and gave an outlet to her rich imagination. The playful affection with which Spektor improvised melodies as a teenager has continued to influence her adult craft and has made her a beloved musician to fans all over the world.