Top Ten Songs by Regina Spektor

Regina Spektor is probably a classical/folk-inspired musical artist, but her influences are as various as anything you'll find the world over: jazz, hip-hop, rock, punk, Russian and Jewish music are all important musical roots that Spektor has blended into her music. However, Spektor identifies no collective style--rather, she thinks of each of her songs as having its own stylistic identification, derived from any number of influences. And sure enough, the songs' stitches speak for themselves.

This is a list of one fan's pick of Regina Spektor Essentials. These songs, through their fascinating stylistic elements, have affected me both as a former musician and as a regular person who craves music in her life. So without further ado, I give you my top ten Regina Spektor songs:

10. "Edit" -- My first impression of "Edit" was that this is a song that jams. You can really hear the jazz influence here, in the piano and percussion especially. However, this song really caught my attention because Spektor's repetition of the word "edit" throughout the song would stay in my head for days--the first few of which I didn't even know what it was that I was singing in my head. "Edit" is a strange, teasing combination of jazz influences and Spektor's vocals.

9. "Poor Little Rich Boy" -- This is pure Regina Spektor. The song sounds simple, but she's playing the piano and singing and tapping rhythms with a wooden stick all at once. The lyrics describe another one of her fictional characters--and this one reads Fitzgerald and Hemingway (wow! She's also super smart! Regina strikes some of my serious geek-chords when she puts references in her songs to the expatriate society of writers in 1920s Paris). But above all I love, simply, to study her voice in this song. I can listen to it over and over again--and I have--and still find little vocal details that are so precise, so tastefully placed. The meaning that goes into her song even at this level, which can be hard to detect if you don't listen attentively, is thoroughly fascinating.

8. "Après Moi" -- Driving, forceful, and three beautiful languages. "Après Moi" is gentle and powerful all at once, and very determined. I love the punches in this song: the staccato notes of the piano, its curious tones; the vocal grunts, the stabbing, deep sound of a bell. After "Fidelity", which admittedly did not help to turn me on to Regina Spektor right away, this was the second song of hers that I ever heard, and the one that turned me into a fan.

7. "Hotel Song" -- I always like to marvel at Regina's amazing talent when I hear this song--her imaginative lyrics and her expressive voice get the best of me here, and all I'm really capable of is listening to this sweet word and sound fusion in a slight state of awe. The percussion in this song is really enchanting too; it lends a really light and playful tone to the already rather ironically sung lyrics.

6. "On the Radio" -- I love the rising pitch of this melody, and when you put the lyrics to it, this song is rather empowering. The lyrics make me want to rebel against everything that I allow to put me down, and to rebel against the very fact that I or anyone allows that to happen to themselves. They make me want to live life fully: take the good with the bad and relish in everything that this life of mine brings me.

5. "Samson" -- is sad, chilling, even haunting. A slow piano ballad that, like many of her songs, expresses itself with an amazing amount of feeling. I love the way her voice matches the piano in sweeping crescendos and decrescendos--it makes for a very touching, very involved sound, that captures the listener like a good book captures a reader. On that note, the lyrics are really worth thinking about.

4. "That Time" -- For me, this song boasts a great memory from the summer of 2008: in the car on the way to the city with a friend who just flew in to town, and who I hadn't seen all summer. I smile whenever I hear this song because it immediately reminds me of the happy carelessness of summertime. It really has nothing whatsoever to do with the composition of the song itself, but because of that memory this song will always be laced with the pleasure of friendship and summer for me.

3. "Chemo Limo" -- This is perhaps the strongest of Spektor's song vignettes in the way that the characterizations are so detailed; some of the lyrics are really haunting. The song switches between a heart wrenching piano ballad and a defiant, jarring character resolution punctuated by bouncing piano notes. Spektor also makes an interesting use of beatboxing, which makes me believe the singer when she says she's going to "go out in style."

2. "Braille" -- Sad, sorrowful, and lonely, this song makes my heart ache. It's for those days when you feel like you're just getting by, when your dreams seem to have failed even though you've done all you can to make them happen. Not exactly uplifting, but I need a song for every moment of my life--not just the happy ones. "Braille", like many of her songs, seems to be a short story in song-form. It tells the story of a girl whose life doesn't work out the way she wanted it to and wishes she could start over. It's a fictional yet no less raw and painful account of life's scathing imperfections, and the scars and stretch-marks we have to prove it.

1. "Us" -- This song is epic and beautiful. I like to play it so that the words dance in my ear as I cruise between Chicago skyscrapers on the city's El tracks. I've used just this one song as my "in transit" soundtrack dozens of times, but for me it carries the image of one day in particular, when the sky was cloudy and a thin, uplifting light shone through the clouds. Something about the atmosphere of the day, coupled with the motion of the train through the tall city, illustrates this song perfectly. In the second half of the song Regina's voice soars in twirling 'ooooh's, and I want to fly right along with her. The piano propels the song's momentum in waves of resonating sound, which I guess makes the movement of Chicago's El appropriate.