Michel Maouad’s “Good Thing We Cleaned the Stairs”: Beauty in the Mundane Experience
Foreword: I had the chance to sit down with my friend, singer-songwriter Michel Maouad, at our ultimate Beirut neighborhood bar, Fizz, to talk about his new album and first solo project, “Good Thing We Cleaned the Stairs.” After more than a decade of making and playing music through various projects, including the bands WonderGaap and Gameboy System, this record marks a quieter, more personal turn in his artistic journey.
From the first listen, the album felt strikingly familiar—not in terms of similarity to other projects, but in the feelings the songs themselves invoke. While the stories Michel tells through his songs are deeply his own, they echo a shared human experience: heartbreaks, career uncertainty, the weight of what-ifs, and the routine we grow into as adults finding our footing in the world. There’s an ease to the way these songs sit with you, simply because they feel lived-in.
Michelle Eid
Singer-songwriter Michel Maouad’s latest album, “Good Thing We Cleaned the Stairs,” marks a quieter and more personal turn in his musical career. Photo courtesy of Michel Maouad.
Michel, you’ve been making music for a while now. Can you tell us a little bit about what got you into music?
I’ve been making music for more than ten years. My best friends and I started making music in high school, and I haven’t been able to stop since. I’ve loved it ever since I was a kid: I used to like watching musical shows like Chantal Goya and Barney, and I was used to listening to music at home with my parents. People in our generation had a very musical upbringing because of the different TV shows we watched. Music has always been very important in my life.
When I was 12, one of my close friends at school gave me a USB stick with Bon Jovi songs on it, and it changed my life. I couldn’t believe music could be so nice and cool. I started learning how to play the guitar afterwards, especially since I was a boy scout and I wanted to be able to play the guitar during our campfires. And that’s how I started doing music.
What inspired you to launch your solo career? How did the album come to be?
I’ve been playing with bands for a while: I mainly played with WonderGaap, my first ever band, and Gameboy System, amongst others. I’ve always written songs with other people and the songs were always meant to be performed by others. So I could never be fully vulnerable in my writing or write purely as ‘Michel’.
At some point, I started writing songs that were personal, songs that I wanted to sing and deliver myself. I had been writing songs for my solo album for the past three to four years. Last summer, I told myself I needed to put my mind to it and focus on writing. I set myself a deadline, and then I worked for a couple months to ultimately put the album out.
Before we delve into the discography of your debut album, “Good Thing We Cleaned the Stairs,” I want to ask you: what drew you to this title?
“Good Thing We Cleaned the Stairs” is the last sentence of the last song on the album, titled “Take the Stairs.” In this song, I talk about a mundane, boring day in my life last summer, when I used to come back home after work, chill, go to bed, and repeat it all over again the next day. The last sentence is: “I forgot to pay the elevator bill today, I guess it’s okay, It’s time to go home. Good thing we cleaned the stairs.”
What I mean by that is, life can be overwhelming: there’s so much to do on the daily. But we’re here now, and it’s a good thing we cleaned the stairs. At least we have that.
“Good Thing We Cleaned The Stairs” album cover, photographed and designed by Sophie Akoury.
How did the album cover come to be?
The photos of trees on the album cover are actually landscape drawings by my grandfather, who was a painter. He had a bunch of drawings of green areas in Mount Lebanon, and I felt it was only right for me to have them as the album cover. My friend Sophie Akoury and I scattered them on the table and then she took a photo of them and played around with the colors.
As you know, when I first wrote down the questions, I mistakenly titled your album “Mount Lebanon,” which happens to be one of the songs on your album, and which you later told me was actually going to be the title of the album itself. So what’s the story behind that? Why was it going to be named Mount Lebanon?
Last summer, I had been living in Beirut for a while, and I got really overwhelmed by it. The recurrent theme in the album was that I wanted to leave the city and take a break from life in general. I needed some space from everything, and I describe that needed space, or visualize it, as Mount Lebanon, which is my home; the place I grew up in. I am from there, I lived there, I grew up there. And it’s the space where I feel like I could take a break and just exist without having to be an active part of society.
So this is why I wanted to name it “Mount Lebanon,” but Fadi [Tabbal] told me “ لا كتير مسيحي هالإسم/It’s a very Christian name.” It was a very Maronite thing of me haha.
But the Mount Lebanon aspect of the album was very visual from the start, as seen in the album cover itself with the trees on there. Plus, I’m making Americana music, and Americana is a very “small-town” type of music, writing and singing about your small town and the things that happen around you and your community. In a way, Mount Lebanon is my small American town.
From a listener’s perspective, I feel so many emotions have been evoked by the different songs on the album. In some ways, it brings up feelings of nostalgia, but in others, there’s something so familiar about the feel behind the sound itself. I can describe it even as the pursuit of the mundane. What does the album represent, for you, as the creative behind it? And what do you wish listeners felt through listening to it?
I don’t want to say there isn’t much room for interpretation, there always is, but I’m saying things in the way they are. The words in the album are quite direct, with me talking about my life as Michel.
In the album, I talk about failed love stories, dates, a job I didn’t like, procrastination, everyday life really.
And I think, for people to relate to you, you don’t have to write songs with large and general facts and opinions. If you share your personal story, people will relate to it by linking aspects of your story to theirs. And it makes it more meaningful. You don’t have to use big words and talk about very general messages to be related to.
Can you walk us through one track off the album and tell us the story behind it?
I can talk about Airport, the second song I wrote after Chicago. This song is a diss track of my previous employment. I was very unhappy at my job, and I talked about the fact that we were working on a big project concerning an airport. That was so uninteresting to me, and I couldn’t see the purpose in it. We were so overworked and underpaid, and I said to myself: “No, I’m not going to do this forever.” So I quit my job— too bad for content, I guess.
If you can describe your album in three words, what words would you use?
Long Overdue !*
Charbel Haber Apartment**
I love MJ Lenderman***
(*The exclamation point counts as a word.)
(**His landlord’s name.)
(***We let him cheat and have an extra word since he really loves MJ Lenderman.)
Michel pictured in what he calls “Charbel Haber Apartment,” his previous apartment in Mar Mikhael owned by musician Charbel Haber. Picture courtesy of Michel Maouad.
You had your first solo concert in December. Can you tell us a little about how that felt?
My first solo concert coincided with my birthday. I had so many friends there, and it was so overwhelmingly nice and heartwarming. That night wasn’t as usually easy: playing guitar with a band is so natural to me. I’ve been doing this for a while. But talking to the crowd was the hard part.
I played with Roger Zouein, Julie Abou Kasm, Georgy Flouty, and Melissa El Hani. By the way, I didn’t even want to call the project Michel Maouad, but Fadi [Tabbal] made me do that because, well, that’s my name. Most people at the concert were my close friends who have been there since the beginning—ever since I started writing the album. They knew the songs and the stories behind them. It felt very natural sharing that night with them because they all were part of these songs, in a way. So we’ll see what happens when I share them with a fully unknown audience.
It was nice that the concert took place outside Beirut, in Zouk Mosbeh, since the music scene—at least the indie music scene— is often centralized to Beirut and excludes places like Saida, Jounieh, Nabatieh, or Tripoli amongst others. Some spaces in Tripoli such as Rumman and Nabatieh such as Stayha are doing amazing work now to also bring these different forms of art and performances to their cities. But usually, people outside Beirut need to flock to Beirut to be able to attend such things.
You know, some of the best music in the United States has been written about people in small towns wanting to make it to the city. All of my upbringing and my close friends’ upbringing has been in Mount Lebanon. Obviously, Lebanon is not as big as the United States, but why are most songs today about or centered around Beirut? I’ve lived out experiences and have stories in Biyada, in the Metn area, way more than I have in Beirut. So it’s important to give weight to these places too.
Where and who do you draw your musical inspiration from?
This is a very hard question, because —I don’t say this lightly— I listen to so much music and draw inspiration from so many different things. For the album, I wanted it to be singer-songwriter oriented, so I was being inspired by many artists that focus on storytelling more than the music itself, which is different from what I’ve done my whole life. This is the first time I go about this process this way: With other projects I was involved in, we would write an amazing tune, an amazing melody, and then find the right words. This time around, I wrote words without pre-existing melodies in my head, and then created a melody around the words.
I was inspired by the greats; Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, MJ Lenderman. Shout out MJ Lenderman, love him.
Michel pictured with Roger Zouein and Julie Abou Kasm during his and Interbellum’s performance at Fizz on February 8, 2025. Photo courtesy of Michel Maouad.
What are you looking forward to in the coming year?
Two things: I can’t wait to tour my album, I’m currently working on making that happen very soon. And there’s a second album coming soon as well. Let’s keep this ball rolling in 2026.
You can listen to Michel’s new album across Spotify & Anghami. Michel will also be opening for Postcards at KED Beirut on February 27.
It might be time for me to clean my stairs now.
Michelle Eid
Michelle is an editor, and researcher. Her research focuses on matters concerning socio-economic rights and development in the MENA region, such as the right to health, food sovereignty, agriculture and more. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of Al Rawiya.
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