2004-02-07 NME

THE REGINA MONOLOGUES

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Regina Spektor tells NME how she ended up duetting with Julian Casablancas and becoming an honorary Followill

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Regina Spektor isn't just singing with julian Casablancas, she's dating him. And he's not the only one. She's also seeing Nick and Fab and Nikolai and Albert. And - get this! - she's also courting all four Kings Of Leon. No, seriously. She is. She told us, and she wouldn't lie.

You're gonna be hearing a lot from Regina Spektor. In fact, you've almost definitely heard her already. She supported The Strokes in the UK last December. She was the girl who sang with Julian on the then-unheard collaboration, 'Modern Girls And Old Fashion Men' ("Not 'Old Fashioned'!" she laughs). The track is a total departure from anything The Strokes have ever done before. An emotional tug o'war between Spektor and Casablancas, it's part music hall, part killing-Kylie-era Nick Cave.

Scheduled for release on January 12, the track has been put back until February 9 because, rumour has it, Julian was unhappy with the phrasing of the credit as "The Strokes featuring Regina Spektor" and not "Regina Spektor featuring The Strokes".

"That doesn't make any sense!" Spektor squeals when NME relays this gossip. "I know he didn't want it to be The Strokes and, you know, some guest girl.. he wanted it to say Regina Spektor and The Strokes. That's just his way. but you can't feature somebody if you're just like a singer on a song that has been completely written by somebody else."

Spektor's story began when she emigrated with her family from Moscow aged nine. She was the kind of girl who bounced from private school to private school, and was always in the wrong clothes or scribbling in her journal or pretending to play piano on a tabletop.

Regina never had money to buy records, so she relied on friends' mix-tapes to expose her to other musicians' sounds. "People would be like, 'That sounds like Joni Mitchell' and I'd be like, (holds a pen as if she's writing it down) J-o-n-i M-i-t-c-h-e-I-l," she says.

Fate led Regina to The Strokes. She was recording her third record, 'Soviet Kitsch', with Gordon Raphael, just before he produced 'Room On Fire'. She tells us that she'd "never even heard" a Strokes song up to this point.

While in the studio Raphael played Julian a few of Regina's songs. Julian asked for a copy and showed up the next day playing one of 'Soviet Kitsch"s standout tracks, 'The Flowers', on his guitar. Next thing she knew, Regina was playing live to fans, singing with The Strokes as her backing band, and having Kings Of Leon (also on The Strokes' North American tour) refer to her as "an honorary Followill". "I was so intimidated," Regina admits. "I think I'm still slightly intimidated. You listen to the shows every night and it's just awesome music. And you hang out with these people and then you're like, 'OK, you're brilliant.'" And any friend of theirs is a friend of ours.

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Elizabeth Goodman

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Regina has the last laugh: best mates with The Strokes and she wears pegs in her hair!