Regina Spektor on “Home, Before and After”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Twenty years ago, Regina Spektor was yet another aspiring musician in New York, lugging around a backpack full of self-produced CDs and playing at little clubs in the East Village—anywhere that had a piano, basically. But anonymity didn’t last long. She toured with the Strokes in 2003, and, once she had a record deal, her ambitions grew beyond indie music: she began writing pop-inflected anthems about love and heartbreak, loneliness and death, belief and doubt. Her 2006 album “Begin to Hope” went gold.

“Home, Before and After” was released in 2022, six years after her previous studio album. To mark the occasion, Spektor sat down at a grand piano with Amanda Petrusich to play songs from the record and talk about the role of imagination in her songwriting and vocals. “I think that life pushes you—especially as an adult and especially when you’re responsible for other little humans—to be present in this logistical sort of way,” she says. “I try as much as possible to integrate fun, because I love fun. And I love beauty. And I love magic. . . . I will not have anybody take that away.”

Spektor performed “Loveology,” “Becoming All Alone,” and the older “Aprѐs Moi,” accompanying herself on piano. The podcast episode for this segment also features a bonus track, “Spacetime Fairytale.”

This segment originally aired on June 10, 2022.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.4	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnik.
0:12.5	Twenty years ago, Regina Spector, who was born in Moscow, was just another aspiring musician
0:18.5	in New York.
0:19.5	She was lugging around a backpack full of self-produced CDs and playing at little clubs in the East
0:25.2	Village, anywhere that had a piano, really.
0:28.3	But anonymity in Spector's case, it didn't last long.
0:31.4	She toured with the strokes in 2003, and once she had a record deal of her own, her ambitions
0:37.3	grew well beyond the borders of indie music.
0:50.9	Her album began to hope when gold, and Spector began moving into more of a pop vein, writing
0:56.6	anthems about love and heartbreak, loneliness and death and God, and she even wrote the
1:01.8	theme song to Orange as the New Black.
1:16.5	Spector's music is powered by years of classical training on the piano, and a voice that goes
1:22.0	from a whisper to a roar.
1:24.2	She's about to launch a tour of the U.S. in support of the record called Home Before
1:28.4	and After.
1:29.4	It came out last summer, and the New Yorker's music critic Amanda Petrusich joined Regina
1:34.1	Spector in a living room with a grand piano to talk about the album and to listen to some
1:39.6	of the songs.
1:41.2	So, Regina, it's been quite a while since we've had a record from you, who's counting,
1:46.5	but 2016 was the last time, and it feels like since that moment, the world has kind of
1:52.6	turned itself inside out a few times.
	...

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