Laila Al Habash: "The majority of my work consists of waiting" Interview with the singer of "Tempo", her second album
“Tempo is an album I’ve been working on for three years. It’s been a slow process, just like its name, maybe even cursed by it,” says Laila Al Habash when we meet her to talk about her new record, aptly titled Tempo. It’s the second album in her career, following Moquette (EP 2021), Mystic Motel (album 2021), and Long Story Short (EP 2024). The idea, she tells us, came to her in a dream: “I was finishing my first album and I dreamt that my next record would be called Tempo, because it’s something everyone has, it’s free, and yet no one knows how to spend it well. I wrote that dream down in my phone.” The rest, as they say, is history, or it will be when the album is released on all platforms on October 22.
Interview with Laila Al Habash: all about the new album “Tempo”
“When I started writing the songs for this record, I realized I didn’t really know where I was going. Then I understood that the main feeling driving me was how I felt about time,” she explains. The concept of time, she says, is explored not just in a universal sense but through her personal experience. “I’ve always had a strange relationship with time: I’ve always felt both very young and very old at the same time. There was a lot of self-observation involved, sometimes painful, sometimes uncomfortable. This record was born from the questions I asked myself, and I wasn’t too interested in finding the answers, I cared more about the journey.”
Speaking of journeys, even from the first listen, Laila Al Habash’s music reveals a constant tension between nostalgia and urgency, with no middle ground. “Looking at myself from the outside, I realized I live in an endless ping-pong between reflecting on the past and imagining what’s next, how things will go, how I’ll be.” The mood of the album is also shaped by the moment when the first track, Tuareg, was written: in a city emptied by summer. “That moment made me realize that most of my work is about waiting,” she tells us. “Waiting for timing, for people, for answers. You need slowness in a fast world. ‘Tuareg’ captures that moment when you’re walking down the middle of the street — no cars, feeling a bit desperate but mostly free. A kind of melancholy freedom, because, well, Milan in August isn’t exactly beautiful.”
Past and future, emptiness and fullness, chaos and stillness. Tempo is an album of oscillations, even between languages. Laila seamlessly moves between Italian, English, and Arabic. There are no rules, she admits: “I do what the song asks of me. I’m at its service. For example, in ‘Sahbi’ there’s a chorus in English. I spent years figuring out what it should sound like. I tried so many versions. Then I realized the track referenced disco music - that ’70s American world, Studio 54, Donna Summer - so English made sense. Same with Arabic. It shouldn’t feel forced. I’ve always done it, but in this album I finally had the space to explore it more.”
A tour on the way
What’s next? A tour, of course. “I can’t wait to hit the road. We’ll start with a few club dates and then keep going. This album was designed to be played live. I kept thinking about what I wanted to do on stage. I can’t wait. Even with the concerts, I want to take a step forward, to create a different kind of show.”