US, by the Russian-American piano virtuoso (and great singer) Regina Spektor, is from her 2004 third album, titled Soviet Kitsch...and happens to be my #3 favorite song of all time. As is the case on almost all of her songs, it's basically Regina's voice and her piano...with a beautiful string background...as she delivers an epic performance that touches upon her old Soviet homeland and the many, many statues constructed there of the State's political heroes, as well as the renaming of cities. The lyrics, unlike any other song I've heard, carry for me two separate meanings, one more literal and the other more applicable to people in general, as their exploits, good or bad, while at one time recognized and even widely lauded, become over the span of time tarnished...or, worse, forgotten: "They'll name a city after us and later say it's all our fault...then they'll give us a talking to, give us a talking to, 'cause they've got years of experience." The lyrics about statues vividly brings to my mind that Russian statue graveyard scene in the 1995 James Bond movie Goldeneye. In America of late they've been doing similar things with old statues of presidents and civil war figures, retroactively accused of terrible behavior from the convenient perspective of our enlightened standards of today. On a broader interpretation, I feel that the trend today is to puncture anything about the past that speaks of greatness through condemnation...I have no problem with reasonable criticism...or simply to forget about it and let it all rust away as Regina alluded to in her song. I keep thinking of the prolific writer Isaac Asimov, who passed away only 28 years ago and who published more than 500 books in his lifetime, many of them critically successful and popular. But I wonder how many people, if you asked a random sample of the population, have even heard of him, much less any of his works? The desire of immortality is often said to be expressed through people's achievements and the effects they have beyond their death...this dream seems to be becoming more and more difficult to realize, especially for those whose life works happened before the digital revolution came to preserve every absurd expressed thought by anybody with an online connection...now we're all being drowned out by each other's voices, and cancel culture reaches out to condemn anyone from the past who might have said or written something back then that offends somebody today. I first heard Us in 2009 after I was introduced to Regina Spektor on an online alternative music radio channel...it quickly became a favorite of mine. Can't wait for your next album, Regina!
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