ButFarslead single, the somber and serious Laughing With, is a radical turn in the other direction.
(Listen to it below.)
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your reaction whenBegin to Hopestarted to take off?
It went gold in a number of countries.Regina Spektor:Those numbers dont fit inside my head.
It just amazes me that that many people would want to have it.
And Fidelity in particular.
I thought,This is delicious.So much of listening to music is physical.
It starts in the stomach and it needs to travel up to the lungs in this specific way.
When that doesnt happen, you just feel it, you know when its not right.
Its very much a body experience.
To me, Fidelity felt really good in my body when we finished.
I guess peoples bodies are the same in those kinds of ways.
Sometimes songs just feel nice.
You even have a song on the new record called Eet.
When Im left to be on my own, I just go fing nuts.
I love finding sounds, and finding where you feel it.
Sometimes you feel it more in your throat, sometimes in your nose.
Its coming out of your actual body, which is the weirdest instrument of all.
Most of the time I end up messing around and looking for new things.
I think thats what happens with voices and instruments.
I go in and out of listening to music.
I will go through really long periods without listening to music, especially when making a record.
It might be a bang out of New York syndrome.
Its almost like that.
Ill get into a record and Ill only listen to that record for a month.
[Laughs]Its like you start living off it.
Thats always the same, I think.
But it gets more and more so with each record.
I started out being a real purist.
Though Im sure if you talk to some people theyll be like, Shes a crazy perfectionist.
But Im less of a crazy perfectionist than I was a little while ago.
So youll experiment a little more, you mean?Yes, I definitely experimented more.
I sang harmonies with Jeff Lynne and Ive never sung harmonies with someone before.
I nudge a little bit toward something every time.
You mentioned Jeff Lynne.
What was it like working with him?Hes amazing, in every way.
He plays everything and anything.
Hes just like, Oh, we need drums on this, Ill play.
Oh, we need guitar.
Oh, we need 12-string, or banjo.
He can just pick anything up and play it.
It was really fun to get to sing with him.
We sing harmonies on Genius Next Door and on Blue Lips.
I love things like that because they would have never entered my mind.
Mike Elizondo produced the song The Calculation.
All of my notes on that song end in exclamation marks.
Its a very fun, happy song.That [song] happened completely by accident.
They said, Lets jam.
And I was thinking, I dont fing know how to jam!
I only know how to write something, then learn it, then play it.
I got all freaked out.
Then I remembered I had this song I just wrote [The Calculation].
I quickly showed them the song and we recorded it in a few takes.
It just sort of came together.
Something happened with that song that makes me really happy.
It had this carefree air about it, like I wasnt trying.
David Kahns string-based Human of the Year has a lot of religious odes and imagery.
I have a few of those songs, that are stories.
Jeff Lynnes Genius Next Door is a story like that.
Its like a little science fiction story in a song.
Does any of this stuff happen to you?
It always ends up being collaged, its never one or the other.
What about the single, Laughing With?
It seems very sensitive and topical, talking about war and God and poverty and pretty heavy topics.
I never know what a song is going to be about.
They sort of happen, or they dont.
That makes me feel like a lot of it is not even my own conscious mind.
Some of it is just things that float around my brain and I dont even know theyre there.
I think that its not a typical single.
I just feel so connected to [that song], it means a lot to me.
Its nice to have something like that shared as an introduction to the new record.
This record feels more introspective and internal than the last one.
So, Laughing With is a good representation of that.
