"Hlemt" and it came true

There is an irony to meeting Anthony Adonis only an hour after Adonis released Hlemt ("I Dreamed"), the first single from the band's forthcoming album. The song arrives with the effortless warmth that has become one of the Lebanese quartet's signatures, but behind its lightness lies a story built less on overnight success than on years of stubborn conviction.

Sitting in a Beirut café, Anthony speaks with the calm assurance of someone who has stopped measuring success by milestones alone. Fifteen years after Adonis was formed, the band has become one of the Arab world's most influential independent acts, not because the industry opened doors for them, but because they learned to build their own.

"I realised at university that I loved writing songs," he says. "I used to translate English and French songs into Arabic simply because I enjoyed doing it."

What began as an exercise in language soon became something more personal. Anthony discovered an instinctive affinity for Arabic lyricism, moving naturally from translation to original songwriting.

That journey found its turning point in 2011, when he met guitarist Joey Abou Jawdeh while both were studying architecture at the American University of Beirut. The pair travelled together to New York and France, chasing concerts by the artists they admired.

Somewhere between those trips, admiration evolved into ambition.

They assembled a four-piece band with bassist Gio Fikany and drummer Nicola Hakim.

"I love them sometimes more than I should," Anthony says with a smile.

Arabic as a language of emotional precision

For Anthony, Arabic remains the emotional centre of Adonis' identity.

He describes the language as layered, expansive and capable of expressing shades of intimacy that are difficult to replicate elsewhere. While some of his lyrics emerge from personal experience or literature, many are born from conversations. People, he says, have an unusual tendency to confide in him.

Their stories often become songs.

Ironically, the track currently occupying his thoughts is not the newly released Hlemt, but Ekhsarak from Hadis El Lel, a song that initially received little attention before gradually revealing itself to him years later.

Like many artists, he has learned that songs sometimes find their audience long after they are written.

Choosing uncertainty

Architecture remained his profession for years after Adonis was established.

By day, Anthony and Joey designed buildings. By night, they recorded demos.

The transition into music was gradual rather than dramatic, until 2017 forced a choice.

"I noticed that the more time I invested in music, the more it gave back," he says. "Eventually I decided to go all in."

The decision coincided with the recording of Nour, the band's third album. Regional tours across Jordan and Egypt suggested Adonis had outgrown Beirut's independent music scene.

Anthony reached a simple conclusion, "there will always be architects more talented than me," he says. "But the kind of Arabic music we were creating felt like something only we could make."

Finding beauty in contradiction

Much like Lebanon itself, Adonis thrives on contradiction.

Anthony speaks with fascination about extravagant Lebanese weddings. They don't reflect his own tastes but they reveal something essential about the country.

"They're cultural landmarks," he says. "They reflect our excesses, our contradictions and our appetite for life."

Even the airport zaffeh, once something he dismissed, has become, in his eyes, another colourful expression of Lebanese identity.

If one Adonis song were destined to soundtrack a wedding forever, it would be Estesna'i. For the zaffeh, however, there is no contest.  "Stouh Adonis never stops working," he laughs.

The value of being underestimated

Success has not erased the memory of rejection.

In their early years, Adonis found themselves largely ignored by sections of the Lebanese music industry. The band format itself felt unfamiliar within a market dominated by solo performers, while their understated lyrics were often dismissed as lacking the overt emotional intensity that prevailed at the time.

"We were ignored, and sometimes criticized quite harshly," Anthony recalls, still he refuses to frame those years as bitterness.

Instead, he remembers the handful of people who believed in the band before anyone else did.

"I learned to value the person who gives you an opportunity without expecting anything in return."

Learning humility, again and again

Experience, Anthony says, has taught him that confidence should never become complacency.

During a performance at Dubai Opera last year, he lost his voice halfway through the concert. The band shortened the setlist while the audience instinctively filled the missing lyrics.

"It was one of the hardest concerts I've ever done."

The experience exposed something he had neglected, years had passed since his last vocal lesson. Somewhere along the way he had begun to believe that constant performing was enough.

"It taught me that if you don't maintain your instrument or your craft, you eventually stagnate."

Within days of returning to Beirut, he enrolled in weekly vocal coaching. What began as technical maintenance quickly became something resembling meditation.

Building your own stage

Ask Anthony what advice he gives emerging musicians and his answer contains little romance.

Do not wait. Do not ask for permission. Do not expect validation.

"Create your own opportunities," he says. "And have unwavering faith in your talent."

He credits much of his own development to surrounding himself with people who were older and more accomplished than he was. Watching them, he says, offered an informal education in how sustainable careers are built.

Escaping reality without denying it

While conflict continues to define life across the region, Adonis deliberately chose another path with their 2025 album Wedyan. Rather than responding directly to war, they built an imagined world where music could exist independently from politics.

"It was an exercise in creating escapism," Anthony says. "That's very different from writing protest songs, although I've never been afraid of doing that."

The choice was itself political; an insistence that joy, tenderness and imagination remain legitimate artistic responses to hardship.

Always moving forward

Adonis now stands at the beginning of another chapter.

Their new album, due at the end of summer, will feature collaborations with artists from across their musical circle, alongside new partnerships with performers they have long admired.

The ambitions are growing too.

A first US tour is firmly on the horizon. So are performances in cities they have never visited before, alongside another major Beirut concert when circumstances allow. Europe remains particularly attractive because of the audiences and its culture of live music.

"In Europe, people go to hear bands they've never heard before on a Tuesday night," Anthony says. "That ecosystem allows artists to grow naturally. We feel very much at home in it."

Only weeks ago, that touring life produced another story worthy of a song.

Following a concert in Baghdad, escalating exchanges between Iran and Israel forced Iraqi airspace to close. With flights suspended indefinitely, Adonis embarked on an eleven-hour drive across the desert to Amman, hoping to catch a flight home.

The unexpected detour ended at a border crossing, where officers recognised the band and asked them to perform. Instead of resting from the journey, they unpacked their instruments. They sang requests, songs by Fadel Shaker and Fairuz among others, for an impromptu audience of border officials and travellers.

For a band that built its career by creating opportunities wherever they appeared, it felt less like an interruption than a reminder.

Fifteen years after two architecture students decided to start a band, Anthony still seems happiest when the destination changes unexpectedly, but the music keeps playing.