Regina Spektor – On Growing Up A ‘Soviet Kid’
“To me, the voice is an instrument, just like any other instrument,” Regina Spektor says.
Regina Spektor plays the piano so loudly, she has to convince piano tuners to adjust the instrument to her liking.
“It gets so loud that the strings reverberate in a certain way,” Spektor says. “And I always want them to work on the voicing and to soften the hammers, and they get kind of argumentative with me — they’re like, ‘You’re not supposed to play this loud.'”
Classically trained from age 6, Spektor knows what she’s doing, though.What We Saw From the Cheap Seats is her sixth solo record, which entered the Billboard charts at No. 3.
Spektor spent the first nine years of her life in the Soviet Union, where she and her family faced discrimination as Jews. “You couldn’t go to synagogue, but we did have little relics of religion passed down here and there,” Spektor tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. At Passover, her grandmother “would make chicken soup with matzo balls, but then we would have bread alongside that because we didn’t know you weren’t supposed to eat bread.”
When the country opened up under perestroika, Spektor left for New York with her parents, knowing no English and feeling like an outsider. For instance, she says she was surprised that her peers didn’t act like World War II had just happened. The 32-year-old says that, in Russia, she grew up in the long shadow of World War II, where everybody was affected by the war. When three of Spektor’s grandmother’s brothers were killed, her grandmother had to hide their death notices. She “would intercept them and sew them into the inside of her coat, because she thought her parents wouldn’t survive the war if they found out.” MORE
Laughing With Lyrics Regina Spektor
“Laughing With”, the opening single from Regina Spektor’s fifth album, Far, released on Regina’s MySpace on May 8, 2009, and is announced for an official release on May 18
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
When they’re starving or freezing or so very poor
No one laughs at God when the doctor calls
After some routine tests
No one’s laughing at God
when it’s gotten real late
And their kid’s not back from that party yet
No one laughs at God when their airplane
Starts to uncontrollably shake
No one’s laughing at God
When they see the one they love hand in hand
with someone else and they hope that they’re mistaken
No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door
And they say “We’ve got some bad new, sir,”
No one’s laughing at God
When there’s a famine, fire or flood
But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
When the crazies say he hates us
and they get so red in the head
You think that they’re about to choke
God can be funny
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious
Ha ha, ha ha
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
when they’ve lost all they got
And they don’t know what for
No one laughs at God on the day they realize
that the last sight they’ll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes
No one’s laughing at God
When they’re saying their goodbyes
But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
When the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head
you think that they’re about to choke
God can be funny
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
(repeat)
No one’s laughing at God in a hospital
No one’s laughing at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
When they’re starving or freezing or so very poor
No one’s laughing at God
(repeat)
We’re all “laughing with God”
Related articles
- Regina Spektor: All The Rowboats (bedsidesign.com)
- Samson – Regina Spektor (terripham.wordpress.com)
- Fresh Air Weekend: Regina Spektor, Victor LaValle (npr.org)
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