Yasmine Hamdan - I remember I forget

Memory is the most extraordinary force. It shapes, and perpetually remixes, our sense of self and surroundings. It is somehow both elusive and irresistibly persistent. On I Remember I Forget, the eagerly anticipated third album from Beirut-born, Paris-based singer-songwriter and producer Yasmine Hamdan, this force is ever present and always transforming.

I Remember I Forget follows Hamdan’s internationally acclaimed 2013 solo debut Ya Nass (Hey People) and 2017’s Al Jamilat (The Beautiful Ones). It further seals her reputation as an evocative storyteller, a captivating performer, and an independent trailblazer. As a multilingual artist, her music has always interlaced the personal, the poetic and the political, often carried with lively humour, and drawing from worldwide and pan-Arabic influences and dialects. All of these qualities feel intensified on this latest album. These are songs of beauty and righteous fury, forged within a maelstrom of global crises: the 2020 Port of Beirut explosion; the economic collapse in Lebanon – a financial disaster which protected the elite at the expense of countless ordinary people. In an increasingly fractured modern world, Hamdan’s expressions sound more vital than ever.

“For this record, I needed to ground myself in a specific place – and it had to be Lebanon,” explains Hamdan. “My connection to Lebanon, and what has happened to it, constituted the grounds from where I started writing and composing the album. However, gradually in the creative process, this place became a symbol, a metaphor, a catharsis for what is happening globally, and being experienced universally.”

“Despite the pain and charged emotions I felt at witnessing what was happening to my birthplace, these feelings were surmounted by a sense of tenderness and familiarity that induced hope and inspiration. By all means, Beirut kept being generous to me,” she recalls. She began to focus intently on songwriting, also reconvening with her longtime collaborator, Marc Collin (Nouvelle Vague).