AmenA introduces herself as a “songwriter, singer and human being,” a rather oversimplified description for someone who faced displacement, created a new life for herself and her family, and launched a rising music career before the age of twenty-four.
“My goal is to make connections with other humans,” she tells Rolling Stone MENA. “Isn’t that the meaning of life?” The Yemeni artist, whose real name is Amena Alsameai, has definitely made connections. With a burgeoning following on social media and a recording contract with Argle Bargle Studios, Amena is using her voice to make space for displaced peoples and remind the world of their humanity.
As a child growing up in Yemen, AmenA shares that she would watch popular TV shows like the Jordanian children’s show Toyour Al-Jannah (“Birds of Paradise”), and would perform for her family in front of the TV.
“Music is the only thing I was able to take with me,” AmenA says, describing her migration from Yemen when war broke out in 2015. “We didn’t have time to say goodbye or take anything with us, so it was a very traumatizing experience. But I’m grateful, alhamdulillah (thank God).”
“When we left for Saudi Arabia, the plan was to stay for a few days, until everything calmed down.” She would spend three years in Saudi Arabia, waiting to return home. AmenA was fourteen years old at the time. The war in Yemen would cause her family to scatter, some seeking asylum to Canada and Germany as a result.
After her time in Saudi, AmenA spent two years in Turkey before settling in the small Swedish City of Vimmerby, where she has been living for the past six years with her mother and younger sister. Her formative years were spent searching for stability and security, a place of belonging.
Throughout the process of displacement, AmenA says the passion she once felt for music faltered. “When I came here to Sweden, I felt ready and that it was the right time to start singing again.”
Now, at 24 years old, she reflects on her journey and how it has impacted every move she makes in her life
“In the beginning, I thought it was really boring,” AmenA explains. “I’ve only always lived in big cities, but after a while I realized [Vimmerby] was exactly what I needed.”
Throughout the conversation, AmenA’s energy is infectious. Despite the hardships she faced, she has an incredible optimism and continues to have such a positive outlook on the future.
She becomes solemn only once, when asked about her family still in Yemen’s capital city, Sanaa. The conflict, now over a decade old, has long faded from our headlines, but the humanitarian crisis persists, as nearly 18.2 million people are in dire need of emergency assistance and resettlement solutions. The UN Refugee Agency estimates nearly 4.5 million people, about 14% of the population, face displacement.
AmenA tells me her family struggles to find work, to find means of supporting themselves. “I’m really very grateful,” she says of her personal experience. “Sometimes I wonder, why me? Why was I chosen to live this life and not them?”
She notes the power of music in recognizing her purpose, saying it wasn’t long after moving to Vimmerby that those around her encouraged her to pursue her talents. Her teacher, keenly noticing AmenA’s vocal ability, encouraged her to audition for the Swedish singing show Idol.
She chose Runaway for her audition, by Norwegian singer-songwriter AURORA. “When I left Yemen, that was the only song I felt I could relate to,” she says. The emotion exuding from her voice when singing the lines, “take me home, where I belong, I can’t take it anymore,” was so raw that it nearly brought the panel of judges to tears.
Her audition segment quickly went viral and has since amassed a whopping 2.5 million views. She would place ninth on the show overall, but she knew she had found her calling.
“That was when I realized that music is not about how you look or where you’re from,” AmenA shares. “It’s a feeling and a story.”
AmenA’s music taste is wide-ranging, from classical Arabic to hip hop and rock, referencing artists like Canadian-Palestinian pop-folk artist Nemahsis and K-pop girl group T-ara. But there’s one artist she says she’s loved for most of her life — Justin Bieber.
“I still love him,” she says, laughing.
On Guidebook, AmenA’s debut album which released in February 2024, she doesn’t shy away from the struggles she faced. Each track of the nine-track compilation builds on an emotion or an experience, as if you’re walking alongside her, hand in hand.
She sings vulnerably about fleeing her homeland or having a deep conversation with her mother. One can hear Nemahsis’ influence in AmenA’s artistry, but also other breathy, pop-folk artists like Ellie Goulding and Lorde.
Her vocals are ethereal, and her lyrics are emotional but feel restricted by the English language — one of the three languages in which she’s fluent, Arabic and Swedish being the other two.
It’s not until Nomads, her latest single released in June, that AmenA mixes both Arabic and English. The track is part of a wider project by the International Artists Project, and as the representative for her homeland, AmenA felt compelled to include lyrics in her mother tongue.
“I’ve always been fascinated by nomads and the way they live, who they are,” AmenA tells me. “[They’ve] been traveling the world as a means of survival, and their way of living has existed long before we set up all these barriers in the world that we call countries today. It’s an instinct that we humans have. It’s only natural that there are still nomads in the world, or refugees. It’s just a new world of nomads.”
The verses include a line in Arabic, specifically in the Yemeni dialect, that says “Yom lak wa yom ‘alaik,” or “a day for you and a day against you.”
“Because it’s only natural that if you take something, you’ll have to give something back,” she says.
