There's a very strong chance you’ve heard Yael Naim’s music before, even if her name might not be familiar. 

Her breakthrough came when her track, ‘New Soul’ was selected to accompany the promotions of the Macbook Pro back in 2008. That song has amassed over 100 million streams so far and has enabled further high profile releases for Yael Naim. ‘How Will I Know’ is the first song from her fourth album entitled ‘Nightsongs’, and marks a different direction from her upbeat ‘New Soul’ which many people know her from. 

The sound of a pure, un-altered piano must be one of the nicest sounds to grace any audio production. The very start of ‘How Will I Know’ gives a quite simply beautiful, simple piano line that haunts you and follows a mystical introduction, guiding you gently into the main verse of the song. With an opening sentence, of ‘Years after you’ve gone’ you are fully aware that this song is going to be focused on loss and the texture of the music in that first minute fits the somber mood needed to let the vocals float over the accompaniment. Yael Naim uses other instruments, strings with full bows and also plucked, giving a dynamic to different sections, but none of this detracts from the elegance of the song, the simplicity of instrumentation that juxtaposes the intricate and often complex writing that she uses to create a completely unique piece of music. Her voice is prominent in the final mix, but is given plenty of reverb that creates the heavenly, light feeling to the music that makes this a very deep, personal and haunting song. If this wasn’t enough, Yael Naim goes one better than the vast majority of performers and uses her bilingual skills to great effect, turning the second verse into French and when she does, your mind will be blown. The first part of the song could be anywhere in the world, but as soon as the French lyrics appear, you’re in France, you can hear the traffic of Paris and it’s obvious where the beauty and inspiration for the music comes from. 

‘How Will I know’ will be heard in a range of places during the coming weeks and months. Its blend of classical musicianship, powerful lyrics and melody make it perfect for TV, film and radio and I suspect that people will be falling in love with this song for all the right reasons. It’s classic, but fresh, haunting, but comforting and most of all it’s beautiful. 

 Singer-songwriter      Indie folk 

Author: Phil Arnold

Phil Arnold is a musician, producer and music reviewer from Devon, in the South West of England. Whilst not writing music reviews, Phil also writes and records under the name of Ugbrooke.