Regina Spektor - Obsolete

What am I? Why am I? Obsolete. Incomplete.

Album: Remember Us to Life [7th album]
Genre: Singer-Songwriter, antifolk
Album Release: September 30th 2016
Length: 6:38
Producer: Regina Spektor & Leo Abrahams
Vocalist: Regina Spektor [age 36]
Label: Sire Records [subsidiary of Warner Records]

Official Audio


Live in New York from 2017

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: 2,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 265,000 +

Credits & Gear

Cello, piano [Spektor], percussion, synthesizer

Details

• The album title 'Remember Us to Life' is a phrase Regina read from a Jewish prayer book on Yom Kippur.
• 'Remember Us to Life' is more of a collaborative work than Regina's earlier music. She used to write, record and perform everything herself. Even going as far as to record her entire second album on Christmas Day in 2001. This album also embraces the technological and is more heavily produced. 'Obsolete' features several piano parts that are processed with effects as well as having Regina play at the same time.
  
  
• Antifolk is a satirical, mocking form of music that features comedic lyrics and delivery used to dispel a sense of self-aggrandizing seriousness that was prevalent in folk music at the time. It can have a silliness to it coupled with a 'get up and do it' attitude. If it all goes wrong what's the worst that can happen? It's only music after all. People had very clear ideas of what folk was supposed to be. It was Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Woody Guthrie. It was a dishevelled men with a guitar.
  
  Antifolk is really about breaking the rules and not being afraid to go where your songwriting takes you. Yes it mocks and jests but it also tells stories and puts individuality on a pedestal. It allows a person to express themselves openly and is unafraid to push the envelope.
  
  Folklore is a set of beliefs or stories that get passed on through a community. Antifolk artists were telling new stories, the stories of New York, and passing them on through the communities in Greenwich Village and other such places. Where folk was rural, antifolk was urban. The mocking comes from a sense of sophistication most city-folk feel when looking at the rubes from the country. Traditional folk music was serious. It was trying to take down governments, Woody Guthrie's guitar famously killed fascists and Bob Dylan was warning about World War III in 1963. Antifolk was fun. A lot of the people involved were only there to have a laugh.
  
  
• The mayor of New York declared June 11th 2019 to be 'Regina Spektor Day'.
• Spektor is a classically-trained pianist who also plays guitar.
• As a Russian-Jew, the singer is an outspoken supporter of Israel. Her views have caused some fans to disavow the singer though she remains steadfast in her beliefs.
  
  

Artwork