Nicole Sabouné is transformed by her ancestral homeland on “So Far Out”

Growing up in the south of Sweden, she was always curious about her father’s homeland of Lebanon but never got much from him in the way of answers. Like many immigrant children of his generation, leaving the homeland and being raised on foreign soil went hand-in-hand with burying the old ways to fit in with the new. It’s not that there weren’t stories to tell about Beirut and the family there whom she’d never met, he just didn’t want to tell them. At least, not more than a few precious fragments that left her hungry for more.

Sabouné has sung about this hole in her own history before, “opening up a door that’s been closed shut for a long time,” as she told BEST FIT four years ago. With “So Far Out”, she’s finally walked through it and found something more intrinsic than she’d ever dared to hope.

The story begins in the summer of 2024, on a plane to Beirut with a friend, at a loss for words to describe how she was feeling. “When I decided to travel to Lebanon, everything was filled with doubt, but also with a strong pull I couldn’t ignore,” she says. “It felt like stepping into something unknown, yet deeply mine.”

Hugged by the turquoise Mediterranean Sea and the towering Mount Lebanon range with its ancient forests of cedar, Beirut is a feast for all the senses at any time. For Sabouné, taking her first steps in the land she’d dreamed of for so long, it was all the more striking. “The dizziness, the euphoria, and the courage that took over felt like being in another reality,” she says. “It was the first time I truly followed the feeling, without holding back.”

With its giddy, lovebombing shouts and driving rock beat, “So Far Out” pulses with the same joyful abandon, and it’s easy to imagine her cruising along the al-Manara Corniche, past the lighthouse and the Pigeon Rocks, wind whipping in her hair. Or dashing down Achrafieh’s vibrant St. Nicolas Stairs, on the tail of a longed-for completeness. “Oh, the world will now see it / How I’m changing into someone else I won’t let down,” she sings, connecting the dots. To love your whole self you first have to know your whole self, and Sabouné, it seems, is well on her way.

How the rest of her transformational visit unfolded is waiting to be explored on her forthcoming album ANA, out next year. That it takes its name from the Arabic word for ‘I’ or ‘me’ is a pretty huge clue, mind. Sabouné says she’s always known that Lebanon is “a deep part” of who she is, but, as “So Far Out” so vividly expresses, she had no idea just how infinitely large it could feel.