Lana Lubany: “It never occurred to put elements of my culture in pop music” | The Cover | NME.com
Lana Lubany (2024), photo by Joseph Bishop
Lana Lubany: “It never occurred to put elements of my culture in pop music”
The Palestinian-American’s latest bilingual material fuses her affinity for both Arabic and Western music. She tells NME how she’s finally captured an honest portrait of her artistry
What does it sound like to truly hear yourself? After years of searching, Lana Lubany has finally found out. With her dark, futuristic fusion of English and Arabic music and language, the Palestinian-American artist has landed on something truly authentic to her, a sound that rings true to all the multitudes she contains. It has felt like arriving back to herself, like weaving together the threads of her life and finally seeing the full, vivid picture.
Born and raised in Jaffa into a family of Palestinian and American heritage, and moving to London to study music, Lubany is accustomed to living with a great sense of confluence, of being at the centre of many things all at once. “My identity is a very complex thing”, she says. “I’m not just Arab, not just American, but a mix of everything. I think my story is unique, and not one that’s been told before.”
Lana Lubany on The Cover of NME. Credit: Joseph Bishop for NME
Growing up in Palestine, Lubany took classical singing lessons and sang in a peace choir, performing for audiences that included the Pope and former US President Barack Obama. “My family always called me ‘Lana the artist’ or ‘Lana the singer’”, she recalls. “Since I was little, I’ve always wanted to be one of the biggest popstars in the world.”
She’s on her way. Speaking to NME on a rainy Friday afternoon in central London, she’s breaking for lunch between rehearsals for her first ever headline show, an important milestone for someone whose first major breakthrough was only 2 years ago. In 2022 she released ‘THE SNAKE’, her first ever bilingual song. Singular and haunting, the track emanated a triumphant mysticism, and placed Lubany at the vanguard of modern as an artist unafraid to interpolate from all manner of influences.
Videos Lubany had posted of her mother, father and even grandmother’s reactions to ‘THE SNAKE’ went viral within weeks. Her family members’ expressions of confusion, surprise then delight (and of course, endearing head bops to the track’s addictive beat) were lightning in a bottle, racking up millions of views and attracting intrigued new fans. Fielding comparisons to Billie Eilish and Rosalía, Lubany found herself flooded with label meetings and an invitation to open for Palestinian/French/Algerian rapper Saint Levant on his world tour, ‘From Gaza, With Love’.
In February 2024, she toured Europe with The Last Dinner Party, bonding with the UK’s hottest band over Japanese food and life on the road. “They’re crazy good”, Lubany says. “One of the best performing acts I’ve ever seen. The way they play live and move on stage is so inspiring. The energy was beautiful and captivating in every room.”
Credit: Joseph Bishop for NME
But, as Lubany tells NME, for all the joy that has bloomed from ‘THE SNAKE’, it was actually born from a place of pain. “I wrote the song in tears,” Lubany recalls. “I’d been trying for so long – years and years – to make it in music, but it wasn’t working.”
“I’ve always had an almost delusional self confidence”, she continues. “Even when I didn’t outwardly project it, on the inside I still believed in myself. But when I wrote ‘THE SNAKE’’, I was feeling that belief starting to fade away from the circumstances.” A sense of helplessness pervades the lyrics: “Turn off the lights / Feel her rattle her bones / A big appetite / Forcing me to let go”. “That song then changed my life. Looking back, it’s crazy how it all happened”, she notes. “It’s like someone was playing chess with my life, and leading me in the right direction.”
This was Lubany’s first foray into writing and singing in Arabic, despite growing up listening to Arabic music with her family. Through her mother, Lubany grew to love the legendary Lebanese vocalist Fairuz, finding nostalgia and an “old jazz classics” feel in her music.
“But being honest, I didn’t fully accept Arabic music growing up”, she says. “I didn’t feel that it represented me. I was into mainstream music from that time. You know, pop music and Disney Channel. That’s what was cool, whereas I wasn’t seeing music from my culture represented in the media. As a kid growing up under that influence, you’re more likely to look up to Miley Cyrus than identify strongly with the traditional music of your culture.”
“My identity is a very complex thing”
She attributes her early difficulties in music to that internal struggle. “I hadn’t fully accepted myself in my identity, so I was doing other things to compensate. Focusing on quick success, making songs for no reason other than to release them… I didn’t stop for a second to craft a sound that was authentic to me.”
Lubany’s mother urged her (with great foresight) to integrate her Middle Eastern heritage into her art. “I thought I needed to make English pop tunes like everybody else to be a popstar; that people wouldn’t accept me if I sang in Arabic. It never occurred to me that I could take elements of my culture and put it into the pop music I wanted to make. Somehow, I guess my mom always knew.”
“Looking back, I’m sad about it”, she says of her identity struggles. “But I don’t want to live with regret. You have to make peace with yourself and use those experiences to your advantage now.”
She decided that if she was going to sing in Arabic, she would do it on her own terms. She now writes and sings in her native Palestinian dialect, interspersing it effortlessly within the contours of her songs. With her latest release ‘STANNA’ – wait in Arabic – a bombastic anthem about “being confident, maybe even a little bit cocky, taking up more space, and just being more of a boss bitch”, she couples her vocal performance with a customary hand-clasping gesture borrowed from her culture.
Credit: Joseph Bishop for NME
“The bilingual thing isn’t a gimmick”, Lubany remarks, candidly. “It’s how I tell my story through my art. A lot of people are singing in two languages now, and I love it.” Indeed, Lubany is part of a sizable cohort of artists blending their native tongues in song, including Sudanese-Egyptian punk artist Nxdia, who sings in English and Arabic, and of course, Rosalía (one of Lubany’s biggest inspirations), who broke boundaries imagining Spanish flamenco in the context of modern pop music. “People can tell when it’s a gimmick and when it’s actual art. For me, it genuinely came out of my journey to being authentic in my music.”
She poured this spirit into dreaming up ‘The Holy Land’, the fully bilingual concept EP she released last year. Ambitious, innovative and deliciously executed, the project was the most fully realised distillation of her artistic vision yet.
“I love worldbuilding, and I knew this world would be called ‘The Holy Land’”, she says. “It’s a very personal title; a reference to the place that I come from.” She knows the reference is loaded, but it’s one she stands behind. “Everybody has opinions on the region, the countries, the area – whatever you want to call it”, she explains. “But the ‘holy land’ concept is the only thing people seem to agree on. The music is about pain, and my journey of being lost but finding the way back to myself.”
“The bilingual thing isn’t a gimmick. It’s how I tell my story through my art”
The duality of her heritage and influences evolved from something that troubled her into a source of pride and empowerment. Unconstrained by geography nor genre, she began to see everything as inspiration for artistic expression. Some of her songs are played on Spanish guitar, their pop futurism and Middle Eastern flair chased with Andalusian accents. “Spanish and Arabic music have a lot of similarities when you think about it”, she explains. “The cultures are very intertwined. When I listen to flamenco singers, for example, they remind me so much of Arabic vocals.” Indeed, the profound and enduring Moorish influence in Spanish musical forms is well documented, from intricate Arabic scales and melodies to the style of rhythm and guitar. More widely, Moorish influences on Spanish architecture, language and food also cannot be overstated.
Despite taking naturally to singing in the Arabic vocal style herself, with its “crazy microtones and techniques”, Lubany has never been trained and is keen to take proper lessons with an Arabic teacher. Until then though, “I’m happy to have almost created my own style of singing”, Lubany ponders, “a signature sound that reflects how I grew up.”
“I think Arab music also needed new life breathed into it”, she adds. “Our music is so beautiful. But it’s like Western pop music in that, without innovation, it can tend to sound the same. This new angle that artists like myself are bringing to the music is unique, and really relevant to third culture kids like me who don’t feel represented in single genres or cultures.”
Credit: Joseph Bishop for NME
Late last year, Lubany took a break from public activity and social media. “With the political situation and everything that was happening back in my home, I felt so paralyzed for the longest time. I didn’t know what to do”, she says. When she tentatively resumed work, she looked first for a sense of community to anchor her return. “Palestinians are all about community”, she says warmly. “We’re a very social, very giving culture. I really miss that out here.”
She decided to hold a “healing session” in London for a few selected fans, which ended up involving 30 people, an acoustic set, and hours of talking, singing and crying over mint tea and baklava. “It gave something to my soul. It was what I’d been needing all along”, she says.
Always, but especially right now, Lubany is proud to be representing her homeland through her music. “It’s really important to tell my story. Because I am Palestinian. It’s about time that Arabs in general get a voice and that there are voices speaking up for Palestinians now. I’m so happy to be part of this rising movement, to showcase my culture in a different light for the beautiful culture that it is.”
“I’m not good at talking or making speeches”, she continues. “I’m better at speaking through art, rooted in feelings and experiences. These are, ultimately, universal. It’s important for me to show that even though I come from a different background to you, I am human.”
With our time together drawing to a close, Lubany gives NME a big hug. Over the course of conversation, we’ve drawn our chairs closer together and talked more freely, living proof of the warmth and generosity she’s spoken so dearly of. She’ll soon be seeing her parents, who are coming to London to see her headline show alongside her sister. With Lana the artist’s dreams coming true, of course it’s going to be a family affair.
Lana Lubany’s ‘STANNA’ is out now on AWAL
Listen to Lana Lubany’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify and here on Apple Music
Words: Cordelia Lam
Photography: Joseph Bishop
Styling: Karine Lubany
Glam: Lana Lubany
