Some years ago, as I have written previously, my friend J.B. Shayne was in my home, and scanning my vast CD collection (we’re talking the early ’90s here), he commented, “Do you realize that 80% of your record collection features female vocalists?” In fact, the percentage of female singer-songwriters in my music collection is probably closer to ninety per cent.
Today, I present a couple of songs from my iTunes / Spotify music collection by artist Regina Spektor, who although she hasn’t achieved the mainstream success of a Fiona Apple or a Tori Amos, nonetheless deserves much more recognition for her weighty, low key 19-year career than it’s earned to date.
Whimsical, with great melodies and brilliant songcraft, Regina Spektor’s music is simply beautiful, both lyrically and musically, with an almost angelic quality to them, showcasing always her distinctive vocals and winsome piano talents, a storyteller of the first order, a singer-songwriter brimming with personality, and more than capable of conjuring up moments of wisdom, maturity and magic, in a career deserving of celebration and recognition, that is uniquely — and unmistakably — hers and hers alone.
Samson was initially recorded as the first track for Regina Spektor’s second album, Songs, which she recorded in one take on Christmas Day 2001. In 2006, Ms. Spektor re-recorded the song for her album Begin to Hope, which, unlike Songs, had a major label backing. And, the rest is history.
Regina Spektor’s best songs tweak inviting melodies with bits of eccentricity in rhythm and vocal cadence, resulting in music that skilfully hits emotional buttons without coming across as formulaic. Laughing With, which was the first single released from her fifth album, Far, doesn’t quite play to those strengths, but instead opts for a modern balladry that is, as you will hear, ideally suited to our trying and most difficult pandemic times.
