Nawal Al Zoghbi

Nawal Al Zoghbi (Arabic: نوال الزغبي), full name Nawal George Al Zoghbi, is a successful Lebanese singer, performing in Arabic and with a fan base throughout the Arabic-speaking world and extending into Europe. She has had a musical career that spans from 1991 to the present day.

Nawal Al Zoghbi was born June 29, 1972 in Lebanon. She began singing at an early age, despite familial opposition to the lifestyle of a musician (her family changed their minds when they realized she was serious in her ambitions). She is influenced by the work of pioneering Arab singers such as Egypt's Om Kalthoum.

Recording career

Nawal started her singing career after participating in Studio El Fan in 1988, she became a professional singer in 1991. Al-Zoghbi released her debut album titled "Wehyati Andak" in 1992, when she returned to her birth city, Beirut, after a two-year singing sojourn in the Gulf countries. Since that time, she has released seven other albums, each proving popular in the Arab world. Nawal takes herself seriously though, and has made it her business to develop extensive knowledge about what's happening within the Arabic music scene.

Controversies happened around 1998 when Al-Zoghbi released her album and single titled Mandam Aleik. The song was originally sung by Syrian singer Houwaida. It was a huge success to Houwaida, but a while later Al-Zoghbi released the album with her version of the song. When inquired about allegations of taking Houwaida's debut song, Al-Zoghbi claimed she had the song for a while and recorded it prior to Houwaida's release. On television interviews, she showed papers showing lyrics of the song claiming that these are the originals and that Houwaida took it from her.

When Houwaida was interviewed about the whole matter, she stressed out that she was preparing for the release of the song before Al-Zoghbi as it was her debut single. Houwaida was said to be more calm about the matter, and mostly asked God to forgive Al Zoghbi for such act. But this didn't affect the career of Houwaida, as she pursued and got quite successful in the Pan Arab media. The song is available on both singers' records and they got their share of popularity mostly after the conflict.

Her album Maloum which was released back in 1999 is believed to be her biggest failure throughout her recording career. As the low selling figures of the album, Al-Zoghbi herself declared regret to rush and release it since the previous one, Mandam Aleik, was released a year earlier.

In 2002, Nawal cooperated with music video director Sherif Sabri to come out with a new look for her song Elli Tmaneito. After airing teasers on Egyptian satellite channel, Dream TV. After full broadcast, Al Zoghbi worked hard on promoting the album by appearing in several TV channels, printed media and more.

Nawal's next album was to appear 2 years after the release of Elli Tmaneito. The name of this eagerly anticipated album was Eineik Kaddabeen. This album was accompanied by two music videos: Eineik Kaddabeen and Bi'einek. After promoting this album, Nawal then began work on her most recent album Yama Alou. She first released the single Rohi Ya Rohi in August 2005. Her first live performance of this was at a concert she held in the Hammersmith Apollo, London. She also made a music video for this song. The next single to be released from Yama Alou was Shou Akhbarak. This was released February/March of 2006. She also filmed a music video for this.

Her 11th album, Yama Alou was to be released on 17th of July, however, due to the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, its release was postponed. It was then released on 26th July 2006 in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. She has also filmed the video clip for Yama Alou. The album was released in Lebanon on the 14 September 2006.

Family

She is the eldest among her three brothers and one sister. Nawal Al Zoghbi is married to Elie Deeb and has three children - daughter Tia and twin sons Georgy and Joey. She prefers to keep her personal life private. She released a song titled Tia which was dedicated to her daughter. She owns a little production company named after her daughter as well, Tia Productions. Nawal is always known by her distinguished preformance, and she always cares about her looks, as every year she keeps on changing her looks. It was considered that the Eli-Tmanetoh look was too over. Nawal always relies on her music art by looking through the lyrics and the compositions. She doesn't mind if her album takes more than a year to get released, as long it is successful and predicted to be the best album of the year. This is one of her tip to her success.

Politics

Nawal has released a song dedicated to Palestine called "Ya Quds" (O, Jerusalem).

Nawal participated in a patriotic song called "Ya Omati" with many other Arabic singers. She also recorded a song called "Hikayt Watan" with a number of Lebanese singers for the liberation of south Lebanon. As well as the song "La Ma Kholsit Le Hkayeh" after the death of Rafic Hariri.