Thoom – aka Zeynab Marwan – is not a student of pop, but rather someone who will always make a genre her own. Sonically audacious and unapologetically eccentric, Everyday, Everything Is At Stake is the apex of a musical self that Thoom has spent years cultivating. 

Born in Lebanon and now based in Los Angeles, Thoom’s artistic identity has been shaped by a revolutionary heritage, a fierce sense of rebellion and an instinctive desire to subvert musical conventions. Having immigrated from Beirut to Iowa at 10, Thoom’s explorations of estrangement permeate her projects, dealing with forced displacement in the aftermath of war and the complexities of assimilation into Western society. 

Featuring co-production from collaborators Dylan Brady and Ike Clateman, Thoom’s debut album Everyday, Everything Is At Stake manoeuvres between an eclectic array of styles, including electronic and experimentalism, rooted in an intuitive curiosity to explore the parameters of pop music. The album’s curt and bitingly truthful title serves as a precursor to the raw emotion Thoom offers throughout EEIAS, where survival and intensity lie at the core of each track. 

Written in a blend of English and Arabic, Thoom’s inspirations for the album pull from all facets of her identity, with sounds and language from the Middle East punctuating her lucid vision of a blaring stadium setting. “My intention is to create something with that vision. I just feel like I have to fight for the music,” she says, honing in on the rebellious nature of the album and stating the clear objective she had in mind when creating it. 

Cohesion and contradiction work effortlessly in tandem with one another in EEIAS, speaking to its consideration of dual cultural identities and Thoom’s experiences growing up between Lebanon and the American Midwest. The themes of the album single “I’m Going Back To Lebanon” epitomise this split mentality, mapping displaced senses of belonging through its lyrics whilst the music video is the perfect representation of the record’s contradiction. Clad in a cowboy hat and denim whilst walking through an American desert highway, Thoom uses the Old West motif to navigate questions of returning home to Lebanon. This sort of polarity runs throughout the entire project, speaking to the notion of having parts of yourself, family and history split between multiple places – but never feeling fully integrated into any of them. 

Thoom highlights non-conventional portrayals of girlhood as a major influence for the project, with violence and rage at the forefront in place of polished, palatable images of what it means to be a girl. “It was about documenting this girlhood that I don’t feel is reflected back very much in culture,” she states. This sense of radical femininity is embedded within every level of the album, with fierce emotion and defiance welcomed in “Towards The Sky”. Thoom’s full embrace of intensity is shown as she says “I’m gonna put my sword up towards the sky / I feel it all /…and I don’t care what happens next”, highlighting the autonomy woven into her lyrics. This acceptance destabilises the image of a demure girlhood that equates emotion with weakness, replacing it with total pride in feeling. 

By confronting displacement and societal norms through a form of mainstream music, Thoom unveils a kind of pop made entirely her own. By using a typically conventional genre to reflect on violence and concepts of not fitting in, the contradiction and rebellion of Everyday, Everything Is At Stake become undeniable. Thoom’s deeply rich kaleidoscope of sound and emotion has facilitated an ingeniously bold record of subversive stadium-pop, charged by an unfaltering passion. Everyday, Everything Is At Stake is her masterful navigation of conflicting identity, violent girlhood and unrepentant intensity. 

This month, Thoom joins Bassvictim for their White Flag tour around North America. Following performances in Europe with artists including Jockstrap and Underscores, this will be Thoom’s first time touring the US. She tells me, “I feel really happy when I can’t keep up with myself, and that inspires me. I even want to make music right now because I feel so inspired by my life”, hinting towards new projects soon to come. 

Listen to the album…

Read the interview below…

How does it feel to release this project into the world? 

It feels amazing. I’m a perfectionist in many ways and sometimes maybe I hold onto things for too long. I even feel like I let it go before I was ready, and that was a huge learning point for me. That’s kind of something I’m practicing right now. And being more courageous always. 

What did the process of making the album look like? 

I was curious about how to write pop music and so I just followed where I was musically curious. My collaborators were very open to anything that made me feel inspired. 

How did those collaborations come about? 

Everything was really natural. With Dylan, the first time we worked together we made like, four songs and there was an immediate magical feeling and we were like, okay, we just have to keep doing this, this is obviously something special. We both felt very elated by it. Ike, I’ve been working with since I first started doing music. He really understands where I come from sonically. 

To me, having collaborators is so special because I feel like I don’t connect with people in general. I feel pretty alone in the world because of many factors, so my collaborators mean a lot to me because we connect on such a deep level. A level that’s spiritually higher than conversation and like an elated language. It’s like a higher form of communication where you don’t say anything and you understand each other deeply. Music can do that, and that’s why I love it. 

Tell me about what sort of stories and sentiments inspired the album. 

I think a lot about archiving my life because it’s a little bit ridiculous in a way. Because I come from where I come from, a lot of things can get erased and I’ve seen them be erased. So it’s really important for me to tell people I was here, I lived, I loved. People tend to distil everything that I do into politics, but my songs are evidence that I’m not just politics. I’m a curious woman. I’m a horny woman. I’m a romantic woman. 

You said that emotion always comes before you have the words to describe it. To what extent is songwriting a personal outlet for you? 

My subconscious leads me and I just follow it. I write a lot of lyrics on my phone and in my journal at different points, which make their way organically into the songs. To me, songwriting is a very spiritual practice, a cathartic practice. Many times the words are already there. The first time I sing it’s just decoding them. Sometimes I write my Arabic songs with my sister, because it’s almost like a conversation. 

Some people have described EEIAS as a mixtape. Do you think that speaks to the sense of doubleness and variety at the heart of the record? 

I think some people maybe saw it as a mixtape because there were a few different things like Arabic and English, pop and experimental, but to me, it’s an album. The contradictions of it, that’s what makes people think it’s a mixtape, but that’s the point of my album. That’s why I call it pop and noise, because I don’t know if I can ever release a full pop record without making it feel my own. This is my type of pop. To me it’s very cohesive because the songs are a reflection of how ridiculous my life has been, immigrating from Beirut to a tiny town in Iowa. Maybe that’s what makes you make an album like this. 

How are you feeling about your upcoming tour with Bassvictim? 

I’m really excited because it’s with friends. I just feel like I’m so busy; my life has really picked up pace and I’m feeling very happy about it. I wake up every day and it’s a constant machine I have to wrangle, which has been my dream my entire life. I just feel like I’m really stepping into it right now. 

Is there anything else you’d like people to know about EEIAS? 

It was really inspired by girlhood, but the version of it that gets overlooked. It’s always portrayed through melancholy, cutesy stuff, but my understanding and experience of girlhood was severe and savage. The album’s a bit of a love letter because anytime I needed saving or stability, it was my girlfriends who were there for me. 

Girlhood is not just Mac lip liner and sparkles; it’s also exorcism and revenge, you know? It’s also having really intense feelings that you sometimes can’t control. I think it’s pretty violent to be a girl. Being able to be this sensitive is also a two-edged sword, because that means you feel everything, but then you feel everything. It’s the most rebellious thing you can do in a world that alienates you and numbs you. 

Listen to the album…

Words – Mia Chung

Photography – Madeline Hampton