Swedish artist Nicole Sabouné has said a journey to Lebanon, her father's country of birth, became the foundation for the most personal record of her career. Her fifth album, "ANA أنا" — the title uses the Arabic word for "I" — is due on streaming services roughly a month after she spoke to Dagens Nyheter, which published the interview on 21 October 2026.
Speaking to the newspaper from a corner of an office in one of the Skeppsholmen buildings that house record labels and studios, Sabouné described the album as her most uncompromising work to date.
Why it matters
Sabouné, born in Sölvesborg in 1991 and raised in Lund, has spent more than a decade building a reputation for records that move between gothic, new wave, rock and postpunk, according to Dagens Nyheter. Her previous albums were built around outside concepts: "Miman" from 2015 drew on Harry Martinson's space epic "Aniara", and "Kismet" from 2023 took inspiration from Sofia Coppola's films.
With "ANA أنا", the newspaper reports, the starting point is her own life rather than a borrowed framework. The record also gives her a way to address a gap she says has shaped her sense of self.
A family silence, and a grandmother's Arabic
For the first ten-odd years of her life, Sabouné believed she was half French. At home in Lund her father spoke French and cooked well, she told Dagens Nyheter, but he said little about his upbringing, where he had lived or where he was born.
The picture began to shift when she met her grandmother for the first time and heard her speak not only French but Arabic. That was when Sabouné started to suspect a different origin — that she is Lebanese. She told the newspaper she felt confused, and that she has spent more than a decade trying to get closer to that side of herself.
"I have felt half my whole life, because I haven't been exposed to my other, Lebanese side," she said, according to Dagens Nyheter. "Some people learn a lot about their cultural heritage from their parents. I haven't. This record is a way of exploring that heritage."
She described the writing process as emotionally driven rather than carefully considered, and said the work has been vulnerable throughout. She expects the journey itself to continue for the rest of her life.
Landing in Lebanon: "more at home than ever"
Sabouné had put off travelling to Lebanon for several years as the security situation there deteriorated, the newspaper reports, until she reached a point where she either went soon or waited a very long time.
She told Dagens Nyheter she had romanticised the country and was frightened it would fail to match her expectations — that she might find chaos, or feel out of place. The opposite happened. Recalling the moment she first met her Lebanese family, she said that as soon as she landed she felt more at home than she ever had.
The eleven tracks on the album delve into the country's history and political climate as a way of finding ground to stand on. Alongside her usual distorted postpunk guitars and rock drums, new musical elements appear. Sabouné said the trip opened a whole musical world and that she pushed herself to bring Arabic melodic language into the record, while keeping it recognisably her own music. She cited, as one example, having her friend Ziyad play the stringed instrument the oud.
One track, "Light for us", takes the 2020 explosion at Beirut's port as its starting point. At least 220 people were killed and thousands more injured in the blast. Into the gaps of her distinctive sound, Sabouné has woven interviews with demonstrators who took part in the protests that followed.
She told the newspaper the explosion lays bare the corruption in the country and a political leadership that has failed its people, since no one has taken responsibility for what happened. Writing about it felt symbolic, she said, because she also wanted to pay tribute to the Lebanese people and their resilience.
A poem from her father
Sabouné has described the exploration as an attempt to get closer to her father, though she says he has remained largely silent. She asked him, on the off chance, to contribute in some small way. Then one day her phone pinged: he had recorded a poem he wrote himself, in Arabic.
"I completely broke down," she told Dagens Nyheter.
She had hoped the journey would bring her nearer to him — that they would talk about his childhood home in Tripoli, or about the mountains, the sea, the valleys and the remarkable food. He does not want to, she said. She now feels more separated from him than ever, but she accepts it: if they cannot talk about Lebanon, she has her own Lebanon now.
Sabouné began her recording career in 2012 with the single "Unseen footage from a forthcoming funeral" and released her debut album, "Must exist", in 2014. She grew up in Lund and now lives in Stockholm.
"ANA أنا" arrives on streaming platforms about a month after the Dagens Nyheter interview; listeners will be able to judge how far the Arabic melodic touches and Beirut's recent history have reshaped her sound.
