What does it mean for an Arab singer shaped by classical and sacred traditions to pivot into popular music?
In a region where audiences stay fiercely loyal to the artists they grew up with and the sounds that shaped them, Lebanese singer Abeer Nehme is testing whether that pivot can happen on her own terms – embracing a contemporary pop sound while holding on to the sophistication that first set her apart.
Nehme’s decision to expand rather than retain is more instinctive than commercial. “I am still trying to understand if it was a fear I was trying to break or curiosity I was trying to satisfy,” she says from Beirut.
“But an artist or, really, any creative person thrives by being adventurous, and I thought it was time to stretch out, show people and myself that I am not one who can be put in only one place. So now, I want to embrace everything: different songs, music videos. I want to do it all and maybe show others that you can do this without sacrificing any of your integrity.”
The rewards have matched the risks. Nehme is experiencing the most successful period of her nearly two-decade career, sparked by the 2022 release of Bi Saraha. That single, followed by Men Baadak and Sadde’ni Nsitak, has amassed about 100 million YouTube streams and repositioned her as a top-tier artist – drawing in new listeners while confirming her appeal to the curious on the margins.
Each song carries its own quiet daring: the electronic percussion bubbling beneath the strings in Sadde’ni Nsitak, or the elongated, almost ethereal melodies of Men Baadak, a composition so assured it seems content to simply envelop you in its hazy emotions rather than chase an easy hook.
The balance so far is close to pitch-perfect – as much modern pop as it is rooted in the classical orchestrations and lyrical explorations of tarab. It has welcomed first-time fans without alienating those who have followed her across a career of eclectic releases.
Nehme’s 2009 album, Aroma of My Prayer, offered a contemporary take on liturgical traditions drawn from Syriac, Byzantine and Armenian sacred music. In 2012, came Ethnopholia, a documentary series that took her across various countries to document and perform folk traditions in their original settings, from Indian ragas to Greek chants.
Such projects, alongside collaborations with Lebanese composers Marcel Khalife and Jean-Marie Riachi, revealed what would become central to Nehme’s pop work: an instinct to meld styles without losing their relative essence. The Aga Khan Music Awards recognised this in 2019, naming her a finalist and calling her an “all-styles specialist”.
Nehme is in no way disavowing those pursuits, she notes. They all brought her to this creative juncture. “All the classical work, the studies, the journeys, the music I listened to, it all left something in me,” she says. “That is exactly what brought me here. I could not have arrived at this point if I had started elsewhere. When you have the whole package, when you know your voice in all its aspects, when you have heard a lot and tried a lot, you become able to choose better.”
That depth of knowledge – the training, the experiments, the endless styles she has explored – can raise its own doubts. Nehme admits some anxiety before her latest foray into Arabic pop. The thought lingered: could all this variety blur her identity, leave her skilled in everything but defined by nothing? She notes the opposite has happened. Instead, the new chapter has allowed her to embrace her fresh sound with a studied curiosity, realising that pop music is a craft of its own.
“Each style requires a way of singing,” Nehme says. “I cannot sing a pop song in a tarab style, nor the opposite. But whatever I sing, people must know it is me. Each song takes you somewhere … it is like cooking, everything needs the right spices. Less salt, more salt, but it has to taste like you.”
That palette was refined early in the family home in the mountainous town of Tannourine in northern Lebanon. The radio was banned, and cassettes filled the house instead, stacked on shelves, kitchen tables and near players, featuring the giants of the Arabic music canon: Umm Kulthum, Fairuz, Mohammed Abdel Wahab, Wadih El Safi and Majida El Roumi.
“My dad had this thing about the radio – that it would just play songs that were at a lower musical level. Because of that, we never touched the dial as kids,” she recalls. “If we were going to hear music, he wanted us to listen to works of quality so we could really appreciate the art form for what it is.”
That sense of quality essentially seeped into her by osmosis. According to her mother, Nehme began composing songs with “strange and wonderful stories” at the young age of three. By six, she was singing regularly, and by nine, she had memorised Syrian singer Asmahan’s entire repertoire – a feat that she recalls as “a challenge, but never impossible”.
This grounding, backed by a degree in oriental singing from the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, where she also studied the qanun, gave Nehme a breadth few Arabic singers possess. Still, she admits feeling boxed in at times. “People sometimes put me in a certain place because of the academic side,” she says. “But the musicologist you are referring to – well, I left her in the classroom.”
She chuckles, though the point is serious: the rigorous training is there, but she refuses to be defined by it.
Nehme applies that discipline now to her pop work. Arabic popular music, she notes, is a team sport. “It is meant to sound effortless, but from my experience with songs like Men Baadak, the fact that they seem deceptively simple doesn’t make them easy to perform,” she says.
“The importance of nailing the right arrangement – the vocal melodies, the harmonies, the way the lyrics land – is huge. When you get it right, an ordinary song can be elevated immediately. That’s why you have to work well with the composer, the producer and the writer. They create the foundation and give the song its direction and shape.”
Nehme is aware of the growing constraints of the genre. “We are living in an age where everything is being sped up, so no one is really able to sit down and listen to a song for 10 minutes any more,” she says. “Everything has to be delivered within three minutes. That doesn’t make the music less beautiful – you just maybe have to search more to find the right songs. Each era has its own artists, its own sound.”
Judging by the growing momentum, Nehme is capturing the moment. An artist once on the fringes of modern Arabic music, she is now defining her own path, carrying the quality and precision of a classically trained singer still curious about what else the art form can offer.
“Music is a language of healing, humanity and ultimately of dialogue. How beautiful that you deliver this just by opening your mouth and singing melodies that can touch people no matter where they are in the world,” Nehme says.
“I always wanted to reach out and touch the hearts of as many people as I can, and I feel that I am ready to do this in the biggest way possible now. And why not? When you can express something that can affect people, it is a beautiful thing to do. It is magic.”
TN Magazine editor: Nasri Atallah
TN Magazine deputy editor and fashion director: Sarah Maisey
Photographer: Lara Zankoul
Executive producer: Samer Fleihan
Production House: Fifteen O Five
Line producer: Jeanne Karam
Assistant stylist: Patile Tachjian
Make-up artist: Hawraa Doukak
Artist hairdresser: Remah Jammoul
Assistant photographer: Cesar Abdelhak
Location Manager: Jad Nehme
Nail Artist: Laura Saad
Special thanks: Eliane Al Hajj and Medium Mena
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