I first discovered Abeer Nehme through her music nearly 20 years ago. I met her in person only 24 hours before our Billboard Arabia cover interview, and it didn’t take long to realize the artist and the person were inseparable, that I was sitting across from someone who had made music not just her profession, but her identity and entire way of life.
I had been anticipating this interview for more than a year, replaying countless conversations in my head: all the things I hoped to ask an artist like her. For months, I drove around listening almost obsessively to the live album from her Cairo Opera House concert, a performance filled with some of my favorite songs in her voice. I imagined asking why she chose to open the night with “Wainak,” (Where Are You?) whether she worked closely with the musicians on the orchestral reinterpretation of “Wadda’t El Leil” (I bid farewell to the long night) or what it felt like to perform the operatic section of “Ghani Qalilan Ya Asafir” (Sing a Little, O Birds), the song that ultimately convinced me Abeer truly is the songbird of Arabic music.
But when the moment finally arrived and I watched her walk into the room, I decided not to tell her any of that. Not about the songs, the admiration, or the first time I heard her voice. I chose instead to do my job as professionally as possible, and let her tell her story in her own words.
Abeer agreed to meet at a small café someone had recommended to her. She arrived on time and still apologized repeatedly. She gave everyone in the room her full attention, asking thoughtful questions, listening carefully, studying each of us as though she wanted to make sure whatever she was about to share would land on receptive ears. An hour later, I realized I — the interviewer — had spoken about myself far more than she had.
Long before she had hit songs or charting albums of her own, Abeer Nehme was already a voice recognized across the Arab world, from the Levant to the Gulf and North Africa. Not in the sense of mainstream celebrity, but as an exceptional vocalist admired by musicians, composers and listeners drawn to depth and craftsmanship. She first appeared publicly through a talent show, though by then she was already immersed in formal academic music studies. She lent her voice to projects by Charbel Rouhana, Marcel Khalife and Jean-Marie Riachi, and spent years performing classical Arabic repertoire and tarab reinterpretations for audiences around the world. She also traveled to unconventional destinations for music research and archival work.
Then, slowly, the butterfly emerged from the cocoon.
In recent years, Abeer stepped in front of that same audience as a fully realized pop star, and her biggest breakthrough arrived just as she entered her forties. Late-blooming success is not unheard of in Arabic music, but what makes Abeer’s story different is that the delay was intentional.
“I don’t believe in instant fame,” she tells Billboard Arabia. “I was working on myself as an artist and as a human being. I was experimenting through travel, through discovering different cultures and musical traditions. I think all of it was building, stone by stone, toward this moment. Maybe I was preparing for it subconsciously.”
Before this wave of mainstream success, Abeer was often described as an “elite artist,” a label tied to her technical precision and years spent performing vocally demanding styles ranging from opera to classical Arabic repertoire. But once she crossed into commercial success, she became more than capable, both through her music and in conversation, of challenging that perception.
“Sometimes people said it lovingly,” she says. “Like they were giving me a prestigious label I was supposed to be proud of. But it upset me… what does ‘elite’ even mean? I sing for older people, younger people, for everyone. Music is a message that reaches every human being.”
Then she pauses before adding with a smile: “But deep down, I always smiled and thought: just wait.” It’s the smile of someone whose confidence ultimately proved justified.
Over the last six years, Abeer’s stardom has reached new heights. A string of songs amassed tens of millions of streams and secured her a steady place on the Billboard Arabia Artist 100 chart. Tracks like “Wainak” (Where Are You?), “Bisara7a,” (To Be Honest) and “Bala Ma N7es” (Without Feeling It) have become emotionally embedded in the lives of audiences who continue requesting them at every concert, songs capable of bringing both listeners and Abeer herself to tears.
Abeer grew up during the Lebanese Civil War, becoming familiar early with hardship and circumstances beyond her family’s control. But she also learned that nothing was powerful enough to silence music.
She learned that from her father, who lived with a lifelong war injury after losing his leg, yet never abandoned his passion for singing, a passion he passed on with discipline and determination to his nine children, especially his eldest daughter, Abeer. His voice guided hers throughout childhood, shaping her phrasing and introducing her to the styles of legendary Arab singers including Asmahan, Umm Kulthum and Fairuz. Their techniques became embedded in her disciplined voice, allowing her to move fluidly across styles while always sounding unmistakably like herself.
By the time her father eventually lost his own voice after years of illness, thousands around the world were attending Abeer’s concerts searching for a voice that could reconnect them to home, and transport them somewhere beyond the present moment.
Just weeks before our interview, Abeer stood onstage at Royal Albert Hall before a massive audience while her home country, Lebanon, remained under attack. She performed “Li Beirut” (For Beirut), the iconic Fairuz song first released during the Lebanese Civil War nearly 50 years ago, and was overcome with emotion.
After the performance, she boarded a plane and returned home to the Beirut suburbs after speaking to the London audience about her country and its complexities. It wasn’t the first war the Lebanese artist had lived through, a reality that led me to ask what it means to create music in joyless times. She answered by quoting Friedrich Nietzsche: “Without music, life would be a mistake.”
Then she continued: “In times of violence, we need to create music with even greater depth, greater beauty, and greater devotion than ever before. Music doesn’t necessarily save the world. But music saves human beings.”
For all the softness of her presence and the poetic calm that fills the room when she speaks, every answer leaves behind the same impression: this is an incredibly strong woman, someone who approaches emotion, art and sensitivity with the precision of an expert.
And “expert” is a word worth lingering on. Abeer did not arrive at this moment — this seat, this cover — through shortcuts or compromise. Hers has been a long journey shaped by discipline, curiosity, individuality, and a refusal to follow convention.
As our conversation reached that point, one final question suddenly came to mind: Would she change anything about the journey?
Less than 24 hours with Abeer Nehme was enough for me to already know the answer before she ever said it.
This is an English translation of Billboard Arabia‘s April cover story, which originally published here.
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