Tayara

Nawal El Zoghbi made her name on emotional acceleration, and "Tayara" is one of her cleaner examples of that signature: a song that starts with longing and ends somewhere closer to flight, the word itself — airplane, soaring thing — carrying the double meaning of escape and aspiration. The production is distinctly 1990s Lebanese pop, all synthesized strings and bright percussion that sounds like it belongs on a beach at noon, but El Zoghbi's voice gives it weight it might not otherwise have. Her instrument is unusual in Arabic pop — a bright, slightly piercing upper register with an almost girlish quality that she weaponizes for emotional sincerity, the kind of voice that makes you believe the feeling is raw even when the arrangement is polished. The song's rhythm has an infectiousness that sits between Egyptian shaabi and Lebanese pop-disco, the beat insisting on movement even when the lyrics are wistful. This is music that understood the mid-1990s pan-Arab youth audience — people who wanted glamour and feeling in the same package, who watched satellite television and heard something that sounded like their world being taken seriously. Put it on when you need energy that doesn't sacrifice depth, or when nostalgia arrives as something warm rather than mournful.