Regina Spektor on Home, Before and After
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\u2014anywhere that had a piano, basically. But anonymity didn\u2019t 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 \u201cBegin to Hope\u201d went gold.\xa0\xa0\n\u201cHome, Before and After\u201d 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. \u201cI think that life pushes you\u2014especially as an adult and especially when you\u2019re responsible for other little humans\u2014to be present in this logistical sort of way,\u201d she says. \u201cI 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.\u201d\nSpektor performed \u201cLoveology,\u201d \u201cBecoming All Alone,\u201d and the older \u201cApr\u0450s Moi,\u201d accompanying herself on piano. The podcast episode for this segment also features a bonus track, \u201cSpacetime Fairytale.\u201d\xa0\nThis segment originally aired on June 10, 2022.