A good point, well made.

Take that Richard Dawkins. Bet you'll be calling to God when you've got cancer.

And the piano sounds like a piano should sound to me, echoey, dark and low, just like "Pyramid Song".

And I'm not being flippant. It's the God angle I can't stand. Maybe I'm missing the point, but to me it sounds like Christian propaganda via the back door. I watched my mother die in hospital a few months ago. She wasn't laughing at God. She didn't feel the need to mention God at all. She just went out with quiet dignity.

have done for a very long time now, and although this isn't my favourite song of hers it's still fantastic. She's one of those artists who i saw playing small shows earlier on in her career and feel a sweel of pride when i see her playing the bigger stages (such as the pyramid at glasto) which i've always felt she deserved.

I met her a few years ago, and she told me that she has an apron from Birmingham's Glee Club hanging up in her kitchen as when i'd seen her play there on a previous tour they had given her the kitchen as a dressing room...

This is my favourite song from her new album -

but I thought that was excruciating. I don't do Dawkins at all, the man's a theological pillock, and I don't rattle tambourines or wear sandles either, but he could use this in his 'educational camp' up the road to great effect. Speaking of camps and education.....

...anyone who writes a song that is recognisably about life as it is live dshould be applauded.

I love the song, I love the lyrics. I first heard it on the All Songs Considered podcast and it led to me buying the album which is very good.

I am not sure it is necessarily Christianity by the back door, as Regina is originally Jewish (I think). It's not by the back door anyway but is very up front about belief in a Deity of some kind, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I would say that wouldn't I?

I think she's right. I have walked around streets in the clerical collar I sometimes wear as part as the day (evening and night) job and people don't meet my gaze. In hospital, they open doors for me and stop me and want to talk to me. And we laugh with God and we cry with God.

[As an aside, why with so many rock stars getting on in years, is there so little about aging - "I ache in the places where I used to play" being the rare exception - or mortality?]

I'm afraid her mannered delivery was a bit of block I couldn't make out the positive verses at all (and listened to it twice).

many revert to life's big questions in a crisis. Not that profound really. Or have I misinterpreted?

Still prefer this one:

Actually I don't care - it's only pop music.

Sorry about the quality. It's either this ot live clips...

Mark. Welcome to the old fogey age. Repeat after me..."Is it me?"

After watching Gladys Knight show up all the younger talent on Jools last night, it's nice to hear a youngster stump up a song with half a brain and a more than half decent voice. It's not smug, it's ironic, and it's not denying the existence of gallows humour, it's recognising the queasy, shifty pain that sits beneath that humour's surface. And I don't buy that it's theist propaganda either, it just acknowledges that even the most Dawkins amongst us probably says 'Oh my God' when the reaper shows his hand. Nice observational stuff.

Neil off the Young Ones discovers a song that’s like...really ...really... like ... just so deep. And... like ... real.
Keep up. It‘s all Prince and Chas’“n”’Dave round here this week.

My daughter swears by her version of John Lennon’s Real Love, but then she’s only 15 and ripe for being fished in by fake profundity.

(Apologies for rancid cynicism but this just sounds like contrived, affected poppycock to me. And I like all sorts of rubbish. Factually dodgy too: aren’t the poor, the freezing, the recipients of scary medical test results etc. the most likely to “laugh at God” and the very idea? )

is a grown-up song about growing old, growing up, moving on - plus it's sung by Bonnie Raitt

A friend of mine she cries at night, and she
Calls me on the phone
Sees babies everywhere she goes and she
Wants one of her own.
Shes waited long enough she says
And still she cant decide
Pretty soon shell have to choose and it tears her up inside...
Shes scared...scared shell run out of time.

I see my folks, theyre getting old, I watch their bodies change...
I know they see the same in me, and it makes us both feel strange...
No matter how you tell yourself, its what we all go through...
Those eyes are pretty hard to take when they're staring back at you.
Scared youll run out of time.

When did the choices get so hard?
With so much more at stake.
Life gets mighty precious when theres less of it to waste.
Oh...scared shell run out of time.

Just when I thought Id had enough
All my tears were shed...
No promise left unbroken,
There were no painful words unsaid.
You came along and showed me
How to leave it all behind....
You opened up my heart again and then much to my surprise.

I found love, love in the nick of time.

Speaking as an atheist, I see no problem with someone expressing their beliefs, even if I don't agree with them. Spektor is, I suspect, someone who thinks rather deeply about such matters, and is rather more intelligent than the entry level for a pop star. The track that immediately follows this song on the album appears to be about how the human race likes to create idols. I don't think her belief is without intelligence and insight. Randy Newman similarly likes to call upon the comforting aspects of religion, and I don't think his opinions are as clear cut as we might like to think.

Even discounting the religious sentiment, the sheer heartfelt nature of her performance wins me over. I should listen to her more.

You must be the first person to get as far as 126 words into a piece about Regina Spektor before typing the word "kooky".

I find her lyrics say so much about my life. Oh dear, I think I'm giving too much away there.

Yes it's good that someone covers those subjects in new music - just wish it was a different singer singing different words to a different tune. I'll pass thanks.

"this is trite bilge" list.

The backing sounds like reheated Coldplay, the tune is wafer-thin, and lyrics are drowning under the weight of their own wannabe-profundity. And that voice! Sorry, but it all just really gets on my tits.

Besides, who on earth ever actually *laughs* at God? If you're a believer then you'd treat him/her/it with respect, if you're not then there's nothing to laugh at. I'm occasionally tempted to laugh at extreme fundamentalist nutters of any persuasion, but that's a different matter.

Now go wash your ears out with some Ben Folds, as a reminder of how piano-led pop with intelligent, heartfelt, though-provoking lyrics might properly sound. (Just don't start with "Bitch went nutz").

It's a smashing song: simple, reflective and moving. I might also add that Joan As Policewoman does this sort of thing very well, too. 'The Ride' from her last but one album's especially good.

Regina Spektor is my favorite lyricist of the moment. I think her last album was amazing and I really love her tunes a lot.

However I really have a problem with this particular song. I find the lyrics to be confusing and confused. This whole idea that no one is laughing at God is stupid, many people do laugh in the face of God and mortality in general. Similarly no one is necessarily laughing with God, as an agnostic I am not sure that it even exists, but if it does there is no guarantee it is can laugh.

Agreed God in omnipresent etc so literally you would be laughing with God as God is part of your laughter etc... Anyway any song that makes me spend more time thinking "what is this about" is clearly not a winner for me.

HOWEVER that doesn't mean I endorse any anti regina spektor stuff or that I do not promote her in every sense.

In fact I love her so much I have made a spotify playlist of songs for you Mark so you can listen to her best work, which also deals with the sort of themes you suggest.

http://open.spotify.com/user/goosefat101/playlist/2DgPrO6NNiWchjbfr6NBSe

(N.B. I refute the its not trying to be poetic and isn't poetic. I think she is trying to be poetic and that this song is poetic. To say it isn't poetic is to have a rather simplified view of poetry. Poetry is a massive sphere of art. Saying something isn't poetic is like saying something isn't music.)

got? They seem to have got as annoyingly certain dogmatic and dictatorial as militant religious types. The seem filled with humourlessness and are intent on telling everyone else what to do and how to live precisely the offences they claim religions have always committed. I've yet to work out where I stand on all this but I'm deeply sick of extreme views on either side and also the lack of empathy and understanding that those on the extremities seem to show.
ps. It's only a song.

Last of the men in hats hops off the coil
And a final scene unfolds inside
Deep in the rain of sparks behind his brow
Is a part replayed from a perfect day
Teaching her how to whistle like a boy
Love's first blush

Chorus
Is this making sense?
What am I trying to say?
Early evening June
This room and a radio play
This I need to save
I choose my final thoughts today
Switching off with you

All the clocks give in
And the traffic fades
And the insects like a neon choir
The instant fizz
Connection made
And the curtains sigh
In time
With you

Chorus 2
You, the only sense the world has ever made
Early evening June
This room and radio play
This I need to save
I choose my final scene today
Switching off

Ran to ground for a while there
But I came off pretty well

Chorus 3
You, the only sense the world has ever made
This I need to save
A simple trinket locked away
I choose my final scene today
Switching off with you

.

Wires fan before you, they draw you
In deep troughs and sharp peaks of green
Each cough rips through you, it wounds you
And flatlines cry wolf on the screen
If I could change the shapes of the waves
They'd all be a perfect 4/4
If I could exchange the sky for this cage
You'd walk with me straight out the door
You'd walk with me straight
Needles slip in you, they pin you
To whimpering, limping machines
Night air surrounds you, it drowns you
In billows and pillows and sheets

If I could change the shapes of the waves
They'd all be a perfect 4/4
If I could exchange the sky for this cage
You'd walk with me straight out the door
You'de walk with me straight

Wires fan before you
They draw you
In deep troughs and sharp peaks of green

Well I've been working hard to reach me target
To earn a few bob for a day trip down to Margate
I'm gonna blow the lot tomorrow on all me family
We catch the coach at eight so don't be late, were off to see the sea

Hurry up will ya Grandad, come on were going

Down to Margate, don't forget your buckets and spades and cossys and all
Down to Margate, we'll have a pill of jellied eels at the cockle stall
Down to Margate, we'll go on the pier and we'll have a beer aside of the sea

Down to Margate, you can keep the Costa Brava, I'm telling ya mate I'd rather have a day down Margate with all me family

Along the promenade we spend some money
And we find a spot on the beach that's simply sunny
The kids will all enjoy themself digging up the sand, collecting stones and winkle shells to take back home to nan

Behave yourself grandad, or you won't be going

Down to Margate, don't forget your buckets and spades and cossies and all
Down to Margate, we'll have a pill of jellied eels at the cockle stall
Down to Margate, we'll go on the pier and we'll have a beer aside of the sea
You can keep the Costa Brava and all that palava, going no farther, me i'd rather have me a day down Margate with all me family

it makes you think.....

Like Paul Holmes I had a brush with mortality a few years back (also heart difficulties - seems our surname isn't all we share) and like him I didn't feel the need to pray. But the other side of this is that both parents died and I valued the role that religious ceremony played in putting a structure on the grieving process though for me it was more form than content for my family it wasn't and that structure had a value beyond any spiritual content.