History Music / ReginaSpektor

** Her official forum has boards for [[LighterAndSofter What We Saw From the Cheap Seats]], [[AllLowercaseLetters far]], albums predating those two, relevant information, space for users to talk, and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers soup]]. Guess which board is the most active?

* OlderThanTheyLook: You would be forgiven for thinking that Spektor isn't in her mid-forties.

* MoodDissonance: "That Time". "Hey, remember that time when you OD'd?"
** "Hey, remember that other time when you OD'ed [[CrossesTheLineTwice for the second time]]?"

* MotherRussiaMakesYouStrong

* NoEnding: "Two Birds" and "Oedipus", in order to encourage AlternativeCharacterInterpretation.

* WidgetSeries: Regina's albums are all [=WARTs=], (Weird and Awkward Russian Things) containing themes ranging from religion, literature, leftover meatballs that have long since gone bad, a [[ParanoiaFuel woman living in your apartment block who can hear you masturbating and your every thought]], and [[MurderArsonAndJaywalking dolphins]].

* AnImmigrantsTale: "Rockland County" and "8th Floor" both revolve around the immigrant experience - the first is Spektor's most autobiographical song, the second a more general allegory for the Russian-American experience.

* AwardBaitSong: "The Call" for ''Prince Caspian''

* BerserkButton: Most of Regina's songs are either quirky and adorable or balladic and depressing, but the live-only song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mArmSi2JaM Ink Stains]]" is her only genuinely ''angry'' song, about her rage towards Holocaust Deniers. It has some uncharacteristically gory imagery ("so who'll be the Jew to make the papers / drenched in blood up to your blue Jew eyeballs") and the song ends with an [[OneWomanWail angry, emotional wail]]. She's also posted on her Myspace blog about her support for Israel because of how the Jews have been exploited and massacred throughout history.

--> ''Don't look so shocked, don't judge so harsh. You don't know, you're only spying...''

* CallAndResponseSong: "Uh-Merica."

* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: She may be this, but seems to have her head together in interviews. She's probably just [[BunnyEarsLawyer a little weird]] and sweet.

-->"I want to write a classic like Yesterday but weird songs about meatballs in refrigerators come into my head - I can't help it."

* CountryMusic: She made a strange little trip into the genre with "Love You're A Whore." Her explanation to the crowd at the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee:
--> Regina: I'm from Moscow, and then the Bronx, so I'm allowed to do whatever the [[PrecisionFStrike fuck]] I want!

-->''What a strange, strange world we live in''
-->''Where the good are damned and the wicked forgiven''
-->''What a strange, strange world we live in''
-->''Those who don't have lose, those who got get given''
-->''More, more, more, more''

-->Everything's a possible record cover\\
Or a possible name for a band that I will never have

--> "Gargle peroxide, a steak for your eye. Except I'm a vegetarian, so it's a frozen pizza pie."

* HeadphonesEqualIsolation: Mentioned in the song "Eet": ''You ease in your headphones / to drown out your mind...''

* HellHotel: The subject of "Grand Hotel," sort of. The hotel itself is pretty nice, but...
-->''Somewhere below the grand hotel''
-->''There is a tunnel that leads down to hell''

* {{Homage}}: The music video for "Us" is an homage to the silent film [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-n6EN4DyuE ''Le Locataire Diabolique'']] by Georges Meliés.
* IndecipherableLyrics - Done intentionally on "A Cannon", which has a couple lines of a sort of gibberish whisper. Though, it could qualify as SingingSimlish.

* LargeHam: Here and there, though Oh Marcello gives us this gem all with an over the top Italian accent.
--> "Oh I'm outta jello, '''I'M OUTTA JELLO'''!"
* LighterAndSofter: ''Begin to Hope'' and ''Far'' lost some of the harder edge found in her older songs. It's a far cry from her 1999 demo tapes, in which she actually used the word "cunt."

--> "While in the waiting room waiting for news of you I hallucinated I could read your mind, and I was on a lot of shit too, but what I saw man, I tell you what, freaky."
* MurderBallad: She and Levon Vincent's surreal version of the old murder ballad [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyi1uPyOvgY "Twa Sisters."]]

* OurMermaidsAreDifferent: "Mermaid," as it's a retelling of the Creator/HansChristianAndersen tale in an UrbanFantasy setting. She mentions that the painful stabbing feeling in her feet causes her to bleed. She claims to have sold her voice for, among other things, a bottle of gin and a bump of cocaine before the narrative goes completely off the rails.

* RealityBreakingParadox: Discussed in Daniel Cowman, which states that it should, but it [[NothingIsScarier never does]].
--> "On the day that Daniel Cowman stopped existing the world should have ended right then and there, precisely 4:15, when he stopped existing, the world should have ended, how could it go on, how could it go on, when I don't exist, when I don't exist?"
* RepurposedPopSong: Microsoft used her song "Us" to promote one of their projects, despite the fact that it's partially about the fall of the Soviet Union and [[LyricalDissonance contains such lines as "We're living in a den of thieves" and "It's contagious."]] Was the "we are a crumbling EvilEmpire" vibe really what Microsoft was going for?

* {{Singer Namedrop}}: In "The Flowers"
-->The papers around me are piling and twisting
-->[[{{Singer Namedrop}} Regina]] the paperback mummy, what then?
** Also in "Pavlov's Daughter"
-->The gravediggers getting stuck in the machine\\

Regina, Regina, Regina

* StealthPun: Prone to these - even {{Visual Pun}}s, [[http://www.last.fm/music/Regina+Spektor/+images/28335279 such as the boa boa.]]

** "Pound of Flesh" is arguably a Take That to the famous poet, [[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Shakespearean critic]], [[BreadEggsMilkSquick and Nazi collaborator]] Ezra Pound. The name of the song originates from Shakespeare's play ''Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice'' that features a stereotypical GreedyJew Shylock who wanted to cut a pound of flesh out of a debtor's body for not paying his debt. During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, Ezra Pound used the character of Shylock for the purpose of anti-Semitic propaganda - and in the song, [[KarmicTransformation Pound himself appears as a restless ghost who asks for a pound of flesh to cover his bare bones]].

-->All the lies on your resume,
-->Have become the truth by now,
-->And the things that you never did,
-->Have become your youth, somehow,
-->You know everything by now.
* VillainSong: "Long Brown Hair" is told from the point of view of a rapist justifying a rape by victim blaming.
-->Don’t tell me what’s proper\\

I wasn’t even her first\\
So don’t blame it on me\\

And I thought, “My god,\\
Why shouldn’t it be me?\\
Oh come on this once, God.\\
Why shouldn’t it be me?”

* WidgetSeries: Regina's albums are all [=WARTs=], (Weird And Awkward Russian Things) containing themes ranging from religion, literature, leftover meatballs that have long since gone bad, a [[ParanoiaFuel woman living in your apartment block who can hear you masturbating and your every thought]], and [[MurderArsonAndJaywalking dolphins]].

A Moscow-born singer/songwriter, known for her [[CloudCuckooLander quirky lyrics]]. She has quite a large range, from ear worms to downright depressing ballads. Immigrating from Russia with her parents owing to rising antisemitic pressures, her family lived briefly in Austria and Italy before she moved to New York at age nine - something she [[RealLifeWritesThePlot has sung about]]. She has since gained a steady ground in the alternative music and anti-folk scene.

* BerserkButton: Most of Regina's songs are either quirky and adorable or balladic and depressing, but the live-only song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mArmSi2JaM Ink Stains]]" is her only genuinely ''angry'' song, about her rage towards [[AcceptableTargets Holocaust Deniers]]. It has some uncharacteristically gory imagery ("so who'll be the Jew to make the papers / drenched in blood up to your blue Jew eyeballs") and the song ends with an [[OneWomanWail angry, emotional wail]]. She's also posted on her Myspace blog about her support for Israel because of how the Jews have been exploited and massacred throughout history.

* OedipusComplex: Her song "Oedipus."

* LongTitle: ''Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories by Regina Spektor'', a compilation album of pre-''Begin To Hope'' songs.
** There's also her song "The Left-Hand Song (A Lesson In How Fleeting Preservation Is)"

* NightmareFuelStationAttendant: She is best known for two things: firstly, being cute. Secondly, [[SurprisinglyCreepyMoment being quite creepy]]. Many of her songs are about death and its relation to society.

* NightmareFuelStationAttendant: She is best known for two things: firstly, being cute. Secondly, [[SurpriseCreepy being quite creepy]]. Many of her songs are about death and its relation to society.

* DreamTeam: Her first major tour? With the Strokes and Kings of Leon. Goddamn.

* OlderThanTheyLook: You would be forgiven for thinking that Spektor isn't in her early fourties.

A Moscow-born singer/songwriter, known for her [[CloudCuckooLander quirky lyrics]]. She has quite a large range, from ear worms to downright depressing ballads. Immigrating from Russia with her parents owing to rising antisemitic pressures, her family lived briefly in Austria and Italy before she moved to New York at age nine - something she [[RealLifeWritesThePlot has sung about]]. She has since gained a steady ground in the alternative music and anti folk scene.

* {{Eagleland}}: "Us" is a deconstruction of Type 1, and immigrants' yearning for the "American dream" is a frequent subject of Regina's work. Uh-Merica goes hard into Type 2.

* {{Eagleland}}: "Us" is a deconstruction of Type 1, and immigrants' yearning for the "American dream" is a frequent subject of Regina's work.