Creativity Quote by Regina Spektor

There is a quiet flex in how Regina Spektor lays out the power map: the label gets a single, she gets everything else. It reads less like a complaint than a boundary-setting memo, the kind an artist delivers after years of being treated like a “voice” instead of an author. The phrase “The only thing” shrinks the label’s leverage down to a marketing lever, not a creative one. Then she stacks the specifics - producer, songs, final masters, artwork - a checklist of the decisions that actually make a record feel like a world rather than a product.

The subtext is about where value is created versus where it’s extracted. A label “picking the single” is radio strategy, playlist placement, narrative control: what the public meets first, what becomes the story. Spektor’s counter-claim is authorship across the entire ecosystem, including the unsexy parts (masters, artwork) that signal ownership and long-term control. “Basically, I hand them a record” is the killer line because it reframes the label as distributor and amplifier, not midwife. She’s not being “developed”; she’s delivering a finished object.

Context matters: Spektor came up in a post-’90s/early-2000s industry where major labels still had gatekeeping power, but indie credibility and homegrown audiences were becoming real leverage. Her statement captures that pivot - the artist as self-contained studio, the label as megaphone - and it lands because it’s said in plain, unromantic language. No myth of genius, just receipts.