On the eve of leaving for her South American tour, Regina Spektor met with New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter to talk about her musical development, her heritage, and the creative process. “When I first went to college, I didn’t write any songs for a long time, and I thought, ‘Oh great, I went to a music conservatory and now I'm broken,’” she said, describing her cycle between compositions as “Oh no, I’m broken. Oh, I wrote a song—I’m fixed! Oh no, I’m broken again.”
She has never returned to her native Russia, and is conflicted about that prospect. But perhaps she would if “someone could sign a contract to uphold that your memories will not be changed,” she says, “like the fine print in a contract ‘Please note your memories will not be morphed or changed by the new things you see.’ It’s like, do I take that chance to go back and see that McDonalds in Red Square?”
When asked about the songwriting process Spektor said, “It's like surfers are—the ocean is happening, the waves are happening, and they would be happening anyway and that moment only happens because they are there together and I think that's how songs are.”
Photograph: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
