So Much Honesty, Truth and Power: Ninet Tayeb Moved Me to Tears in an Instant
Ninet Tayeb. May 2026 / Instagram @n.tayeb
A rocker's biggest struggle is for freedom. Against the frameworks of life, against the music and the industry she wants to rebel against, and against the audience and the media. A good rocker is someone who manages to find the balance points between the desire for complete freedom and the limitations imposed by the world. Her survival, artistic, musical, mental, financial, is based on those balances. In Israel, a successful rocker is a rocker who has survived. Someone who makes her own music, is at peace with it and can stand behind it, and also sustains a career over many years. The graveyards of rock and roll are full of names of those who fell along the way, who failed artistically, collapsed mentally, or lost the audience and the profession. Ninet Tayeb is a rocker who fought for her freedom and won it through hard work and pain. "I am Nina," her new and seventh album, is an entire cry for freedom, a rock, hip-hop and pop album by an artist and creator who says and does whatever she wants, and is mainly preoccupied with herself, her divorce, settling scores, female power and her weaknesses, being a celebrity whose life is exposed and a single mother raising two daughters, while still living the big dream of a rocker who wants to devour life, and how good that is. The story of her fight for freedom is well documented. A reminder of it came in the single and video "Kachol Lavan," in which she deals with life in Israel as a famous divorcée and does not forget to mention winning the "Kochav Nolad" final with "Yam Shel Demaot" back at the beginning of the millennium.
"I Am Nina" is very diverse, almost everyone will find a song to connect with. Ninet worked with a range of producers, each of whom created one or two songs with her. There are three sweeping rock anthems here, "HaBayta" with Peter Roth on production, "Somekhet Al HaDerekh" with Nir Maimon, and "Lihyot Tovah" with Yossi Mizrahi; hip-hop with rock, "Kachol Lavan" with Yonatan Galila, "Boom" with Yishai Sweesa; rock with R&B, "I Used 2," also produced by Mizrahi; Eastern rock and Spanish influence, "BeInatayim Lech Itah," Bleu; a string ballad, "Ulai Yacholti Yoter" with Dudu Tassa. Acoustic pop with an Israeli and Oriental flavor, "Kapara," Eran Witz, and a Lou Reed-like rock ballad with an Israeli touch, "Sirat Mafrash," Mizrahi.
In all of this there is Ninet's powerful, warm voice, and she has long since been the best rock singer to emerge here, okay, alongside Orit Shahaf. There are moments, such as "Ulai Yacholti Yoter," where she moves you to tears. There are moments, such as "Lihyot Tovah" (with Dana Ivgi), influenced by stadium anthems in the style of Robbie Williams's "Let Me Entertain You," where she sends the pop soul that longs for winning hits soaring to the skies. It is fascinating to hear how in "Kapara" Eran Witz took her in the verses to the worlds of old Israeli music, approaching Chava Alberstein, and in the choruses brought out her Eastern and folk side too, and added, with a wink, the mandolin of Uzi Ramirez and later also a string quartet, which plays a phrase from Umm Kulthum's "Inta Omri." A production worthy of an ACUM Prize.
Elsewhere on Walla! she did therapy, cried a river: Odia's "HaShem Ya'azor" is her best album for the full article and from "Inta Omri" to "Inte Omri." "BeInatayim Lech Itah," a song Ninet wrote (together with Tal Kastiel, of course) about a man who left and went with another woman, was produced by Eden Atad and Raz Kuperman (Bleu), who took her at the start of the song into Eastern rock in the style of Micha Shitrit's "Inti Omri" and toward the end added a Spanish and flamenco color. And when Ninet revs up in the chorus with "One day you'll beg to come back to me, until then I will learn to rely only on myself," her sincere singing demolishes every wall of cynicism.
Ninet is a rocker who writes her own songs, and this album is full of key lines about her life and what she truly feels, such as "I'm going to bring myself back home / even if I'm afraid to be alone, even if you're not the one holding my hand" ("HaBayta"), or "Blue is not the color of the sea, it's a reflection of the sky, that's how my heart loves you, as long as I am the water" ("Khat Shteiym"). She knows how to be strong and full of confidence here ("Somekhet Al HaDerekh") and also sensitive and fragile ("Ulai Yacholti Yoter"). She also leans on the Creator, who holds her hand ("Boom"), and knows how to comfort a man who is crying when she refuses to fall again into his arms ("I Used To").
After years in which her stature as a celebrity cast a large shadow over her artistic success as an artist, in recent years it seems that Ninet's career trend has reversed. Today she is succeeding as a singer and creator who performs and records without depending on her fame, alongside being a multi-talent who also stars in series, films and commercials. Ninet's current standing in Israeli music is that of a rocker who has an independent career, separate from celebrity Ninet and actress Ninet, and that is a lot. She fought for that for twenty years, מאז"Yahfah" came out. And that freedom, from the chains of fame, is what allowed her to create "I Am Nina," a wonderful and diverse album, with honesty and emotion, truth and power, weakness and resilience. An album that is supposed to expand her audience and build the next stage of her career as a singer and musician. I hope that happens.
The next stage in Ninet's rock evolution, the next album, will need to bring out her intelligent gaze and compassionate heart into the world, the country, society and the environment, in order to write songs that speak not only about herself, but also about other people's problems. Because that is the essence of rock and roll.
