Anatomy of a Mixed Tape, Track the Second

2. Samson—Regina Spektor

Regina Spektor has an enchanting voice. Some of you out there in TV Land might think she sounds a bit like Tori Amos—and you’d be right. But Ms. Spektor doesn’t traffic in the same material as Ms. Amos, and refreshingly so. Ms. Amos, while certainly talented, seems to me a bit narcissistic and overwrought. It gets tiresome.

Ms. Spektor’s songs, while certainly full of feeling, don’t come off as melodramatic. This song, “Samson,” is a reimagined Bible story, much like the reimagined fairy tales of the late Angela Carter’s book The Bloody Chamber. The basic format runs thusly: take a story we all know (here, Samson & Delilah; there, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, etc.) and use the familiar signs and symbols to a different effect and emotion.

But really you just have to listen to it, because these words in no way do justice to the fragile beauty and nostalgia of this song—the tender way in which one sometimes remembers an old love, with all the bitterness and problems sorted out & away by time.