Songs

Songs is an album by Regina Spektor which was self-released in CD form in 2002. Originally, the set of songs were going to be part of Spektor’s demo tapes but instead were used as an album in its raw form. All songs were recorded in one take each within a single session, with Spektor simultaneously singing and playing the piano.

The album was recorded on Christmas Day in 2001, since it was the only day the studio was free to book—the recording session was jokingly labelled the “two Jews on Christmas Session.”

A rework of “Samson” at a faster tempo is featured on her label-released album Begin to Hope, while a new version of “Ne Me Quitte Pas” has been released on What We Saw From the Cheap Seats. A Russian version of the song was also released as a single.

A passage on the inside of the CD cover reads as follows:

Songs, recorded on December 25, 2001. Times Square was cold, quiet, abandoned. Joe Mendelson and I were going to archive a list of songs. We recorded seventeen—here are twelve of them. When you are listening to this little disk, try to think that you are in on a secret…