Elie Al Hajj, born and raised in Lebanon, speaks and sings excellent English, has a great baritone-tenor voice, has played and performed for more than 25 years, and handles rock riffs like a guitar god, some of which you can hear on his new single, “My Falling Star.”

Oh, and he also does some kicking drum work. You can hear that, too, on “My Falling Star,” a love-gone-wrong song in a rocking ’90s style.

But Elie (pronounced Eh-Lee) lives in a village northeast of Beirut, so almost nobody in America has yet heard of him or listened to his music. With “My Falling Star” and high-quality videos, he is trying to change that and begin his professional career as a singer/songwriter.

“‘My Falling Star’ is a song from time past. When I wrote it, I was going through a very difficult time after a breakup with a beautiful, amazing person that I fell in love with for three and a half years.”

He says he is mostly inspired to write songs at sad moments, and this particular girl inspired about 15 songs, most of them about the breakup.

“I only feel emotional when I’m sad. When I’m happy, I’m really lazy to write songs, or to move, so, most of these songs were from the breakup.”

“My Falling Star,” though does not sound sad. It’s more like a rock celebration of his ex, with driving rhythms, a fast beat and lyrics of praise for the girl.

It’s not a sad song
It’s about you and me
All I want is you to be happy
I wish you all the best and more in life

This song is, he says, “the beginning of my professional career.” He has wanted to be a musician since age 10, when he began playing the Egyptian darbuka, a goblet drum. He grew up in a Lebanese Christian family that loved Middle Eastern music.

But three years later, in 1995, he found the Beatles. It was kind of by accident. He bought the Beatles’ Red on cassette because he thought, “Maybe Dad likes them because they are old — from the ’60s.”

That’s what he told the math teacher who came to his home to tutor him and saw the cassette on a table.

“He said to me, ‘This is a great band. You should give them a listen.’”

He did, and it was, at first, difficult to understand because the music was so much different from the’90s pop and rock that he knew (he was born in 1982).

But, “After a couple of listens, I fell in love with this band.”

That’s when he bought a guitar and learned it, transferred his drumming from the darbuka to the Western kit, and became a singer, songwriter. Eventually, he performed as a vocalist in Arabic music and with three different Western cover bands between 1999 and 2014, when “a very special girl” inspired him to go back to his oriental roots for a time.

He hoped to build a fan base in oriental music, which is what most people in the Middle East listen to. The idea was to transfer much of that base to the kind of music he loves, the music he says his voice is built for, Western rock and pop.

That did not happen.

“When I sing in Arabic, I found I sounded a little bit artificial, because my accent and my voice is for rock songs, and it doesn’t suit Arabic songs that much.”

Elie has four English songs ready to go — rock and pop — “recorded, mastered and mixed.” His goal is to release a song a month and build his catalogue of rock and bring in a fan base. So far, he releases mainly on YouTube through his slickly produced and entertaining videos.

He directed the video for “My Falling Star” and is also an actor and director as well as a musician. During the time he lived in Belarus, he made three movies.

Performing on stage again will come later.

Making it in music, for him, means this: “It’s a dream. “I want people from your country, from Europe, people that speak English, to appreciate what I do and follow me, because our people here — you can find, of course, lots of people that like foreign speaking songs — but the majority here, they listen to oriental stuff.”

The most important reason that he feels he is starting his career now, rather than coming back, or recovering or starting something new, is this:

“I would rather say it’s the beginning of my professional career. It is what I really want and what I feel and what I really imagined for myself. This is the beginning.”

Connect to Elie Al Hajj on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.

“My Falling Star,” YouTube
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