Editor's Info:
Yael Naim grew up in Israel, moved to France in 1998 when she was 20, and gained international attention when her song "New Soul" was used in a commercial for the Macbook Air laptop. When we spoke with Yael Naim, she told us she was in no rush to put out more music just because of the commercial, so we didn't hear from her again until her album She Was a Boy was released globally in 2011. Regarding the title track, she told us: "'She Was a Boy' speaks about the way we judge each other. Sometimes we see someone and then we have a judgment about them, and that's it. It can happen between people, it can happen between religions or community or countries. And it's always kind of scary for me to think how quickly and how fast we can close so many doors just because our fears and our implication sometimes get you. You know, with TV we have been taught to be afraid all the time from everything, especially from each other. So songs like 'I Try Hard' or 'She Was A Boy' speak about these kind of things."
Naim has a very organic songwriting style, as music comes to her and it's from that music that she forms the lyrics. Here's what she told us about writing "She Was a Boy": "I was on vacation in Greece, and there was a lot of my family around. It was a big mess of children crying and a really huge mess. And we were just sitting, like, during the day before going to the beach. I was just playing something and recording from time to time, and something came out. And it's really funny, because I heard the complete song in my head, and then I started playing it and it was like this song already existed or something really strange.

So I recorded it, and it came really like it is now. Except I felt really strange about the beginning - I was singing, 'she was a boy, it wasn't easy for...' and in the beginning I resisted, saying, why do I want to write about a girl who was a boy? But at the end, I discovered it was a song about judging people."

Wokalistka Yael Naim przyszła na świat w 1979 roku w Paryżu, w rodzinie safardyjskich Żydów pochodzących z Tunezji. Jako czterolatka wraz z rodzicami wyjechała do Izraela, gdzie w Ramat HaSharon spędziła dzieciństwo.
W czasie służby w izraelskiej armii Yael była solistką Izraelskiej Orkiestry Sił Powietrznych. Karierę muzyczną zaczęła od występu w musicalu "Les Dix Commandements", a w 2001 roku ukazał się jej pierwszy album "In a Man's Womb", który został nagrany w Los Angeles. Następnie pojawiła się w piosence "You Disappear" z filmu "Harrison's Flowers" oraz nagrała duet z Din Din Aviv.
Na swoich płytach śpiewa po angielsku, francusku i hebrajsku. Często bywa porównywana do Fiony Apple czy Tori Amos.

Ta piękna tunezyjsko – izraelsko – francuska wokalistka w wyrafinowany sposób łączy folku, jazzu z muzyką alternatywną.
Jej piosenka New soul została wybrana przez legendarnego Steave’a Jobs’a do reklamy szeroko promowanego MacBooka Air w 2008 roku.

"She Was a Boy" to trzeci album w jej dyskografii (po "In a Man's Womb" z 2001 i "Yael Naim" z 2007). Yael Naim wypracowała orygnalny styl, opisywany w recenzjach jako powiew folku i jazzu, z z lekka wieloznacznymi, onirycznymi tekstami, zaśpiewanymi delikatnym, nieco chropawym głosem.
W wywiadach na pytanie o jej sposób pracy nad nowymi piosenkami często używa określenia "wewnętrzny bałagan". Tak też było przy okazji pracy nad utworami do jej najnowszej płyty, oto jak opisuje pracę nad nią:
(. . .) I was on vacation in Greece, and there was a lot of my family around. It was a big mess of children crying and a really huge mess. And we were just sitting, like, during the day before going to the beach. I was just playing something and recording from time to time, and something came out. And it's really funny, because I heard the complete song in my head, and then I started playing it and it was like this song already existed or something.......
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