{"id":18693,"date":"2026-02-17T11:47:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T09:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/?p=18693"},"modified":"2026-02-17T12:18:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T10:18:45","slug":"michel-maouad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/michel-maouad\/","title":{"rendered":"Fann w Fenjein: Michel Maouad"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\u00a0 Michel Maouad\u2019s \u201cGood Thing We Cleaned the Stairs\u201d:\u00a0 Beauty in the Mundane Experience\u00a0<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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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, \u201cGood Thing We Cleaned the Stairs.\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>

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From the first listen, the album felt strikingly familiar\u2014not 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\u2019s an ease to the way these songs sit with you, simply because they feel lived-in.<\/span><\/i><\/p>

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Michelle Eid\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Singer-songwriter Michel Maouad\u2019s latest album, \u201cGood Thing We Cleaned the Stairs,\u201d marks a quieter and more personal turn in his musical career. Photo courtesy of Michel Maouad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Michel, you\u2019ve been making music for a while now. Can you tell us a little bit about what got you into music?<\/b><\/p>

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I\u2019ve been making music for more than ten years. My best friends and I started making music in high school, and I haven\u2019t been able to stop since.\u00a0 I\u2019ve loved it ever since I was a kid: I used to like watching musical shows like Chantal Goya and Barney,\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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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\u2019t 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\u2019s how I started doing music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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What inspired you to launch your solo career? How did the album come to be?<\/b><\/p>

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I\u2019ve been playing with bands for a while: I mainly played with WonderGaap, my first ever band, and Gameboy System, amongst others. I\u2019ve 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 \u2018Michel\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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At some point, I started writing songs that were personal, songs that I wanted to sing and deliver myself.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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Before we delve into the discography of your debut album, \u201cGood Thing We Cleaned the Stairs,\u201d I want to ask you:\u00a0 what drew you to this title?<\/b><\/p>

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\u201cGood Thing We Cleaned the Stairs\u201d is the last sentence of the last song on the album, titled \u201cTake the Stairs.\u201d 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: \u201cI forgot to pay the elevator bill today, I guess it\u2019s okay, It\u2019s time to go home. Good thing we cleaned the stairs.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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What I mean by that is, life can be overwhelming:\u00a0 there\u2019s so much to do on the daily. But we\u2019re here now, and it\u2019s a good thing we cleaned the stairs. At least we have that.<\/span><\/p>



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\u201cGood Thing We Cleaned The Stairs\u201d album cover, photographed and designed by Sophie Akoury.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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How did the album cover come to be?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>

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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\u00a0 friend Sophie Akoury and I scattered them on the table and then she took a photo of them and played around with the colors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>



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As you know, when I first wrote down the questions, I mistakenly titled your album \u201cMount Lebanon,\u201d 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\u2019s the story behind that? Why was it going to be named Mount Lebanon?<\/b><\/p>

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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\u2019s the space where I feel like I could take a break and just exist without having to be an active part of society.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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So this is why I wanted to name it \u201cMount Lebanon,\u201d but Fadi [Tabbal] told me \u201c \u0644\u0627 \u0643\u062a\u064a\u0631 \u0645\u0633\u064a\u062d\u064a \u0647\u0627\u0644\u0625\u0633\u0645\/It\u2019s a very Christian name.\u201d It was a very Maronite thing of me haha.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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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\u2019m making Americana music, and Americana is a very \u201csmall-town\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>



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From a listener\u2019s 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\u2019s something so familiar about the feel behind the sound itself.\u00a0 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?<\/b><\/p>

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I don\u2019t want to say there isn\u2019t much room for interpretation, there always is, but I\u2019m saying things in the way they are. The words in the album are quite direct, with me talking about my life as Michel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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In the album, I talk about failed love stories, dates, a job I didn\u2019t like, procrastination, everyday life really.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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And I think, for people to relate to you, you don\u2019t 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\u2019t have to use big words and talk about very general messages to be related to.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>



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Can you walk us through one track off the album and tell us the story behind it?<\/b><\/p>

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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\u2019t see the purpose in it. We were so overworked and underpaid, and I said to myself: \u201cNo, I\u2019m not going to do this forever.\u201d So I quit my job\u2014 too bad for content, I guess.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>



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If you can describe your album in three words, what words would you use?<\/b><\/p>

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Long Overdue !*\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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Charbel Haber Apartment**<\/span><\/p>

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I love MJ Lenderman***<\/span><\/p>

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\u00a0(*The exclamation point counts as a word.)<\/i><\/b><\/p>

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(**His landlord\u2019s name.)<\/i><\/b><\/p>

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(<\/span><\/i>***We let him cheat and have an extra word since he really loves MJ Lenderman.)\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>



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Michel pictured in what he calls \u201cCharbel Haber Apartment,\u201d his previous apartment in Mar Mikhael owned by musician Charbel Haber. Picture courtesy of Michel Maouad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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You had your first solo concert in December. Can you tell us a little about how that felt?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>

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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\u2019t as usually easy: playing guitar with a band is so natural to me. I\u2019ve been doing this for a while. But talking to the crowd was the hard part.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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I played with Roger Zouein, Julie Abou Kasm, Georgy Flouty, and Melissa El Hani. By the way, I didn\u2019t even want to call the project Michel Maouad, but Fadi [Tabbal] made me do that because, well, that\u2019s my name. Most people at the concert were my close friends who have been there since the beginning\u2014ever 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\u2019ll see what happens when I share them with a fully unknown audience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>



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It was nice that the concert took place outside Beirut, in Zouk Mosbeh, since the music scene\u2014at least the indie music scene\u2014 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.<\/b><\/p>

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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\u2019 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\u2019ve lived out experiences and have stories in Biyada, in the Metn area, way more than I have in Beirut. So it\u2019s important to give weight to these places too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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Where and who do you draw your musical inspiration from?<\/b><\/p>

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This is a very hard question, because \u2014I don\u2019t say this lightly\u2014 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\u2019ve 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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I was inspired by the greats; Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, MJ Lenderman. Shout out MJ Lenderman, love him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Michel pictured with Roger Zouein and Julie Abou Kasm during his and Interbellum\u2019s performance at Fizz on February 8, 2025. Photo courtesy of Michel Maouad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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What are you looking forward to in the coming year?<\/b><\/p>

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Two things: I can\u2019t wait to tour my album, I\u2019m currently working on making that happen very soon. And there\u2019s a second album coming soon as well. Let\u2019s keep this ball rolling in 2026.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>



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You can listen to Michel\u2019s new album across Spotify & Anghami. Michel will also be opening for Postcards at KED Beirut on February 27.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>

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It might be time for me to clean my stairs now.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Michel Maouad\u2019s \u201cGood Thing We Cleaned the Stairs\u201d:\u00a0 Beauty in the Mundane Experience\u00a0 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, \u201cGood Thing We Cleaned the Stairs.\u201d After more than a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18698,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[322],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fann-w-fenjein"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/al-rawiya.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/SAM_5835.jpeg?fit=1984%2C1488&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18693"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18715,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18693\/revisions\/18715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}