After a whirlwind of rumors surrounding the new musical event 'Jordan Festival', Elissa and George Wassouf kicked off the first night of the festival the day before yesterday.

The first of the concerts was held in the historic city of Jerash and saw a huge turn out. Tickets to the concert, which joined Elissa, George Wassouf and Omar Al Abdallat, were sold out!

At the same time those Arab stars were entertaining their fans in Jerash, Diana Krall was at the Amman Citadel amazed the attendance with her singing and Piano playing!
Diana, who is a Canadian-born singer/pianist, entertained the attendance on top of one of Amman's seven mountains with her own interpretations of Jazz, Bop and Swing.

Although some disapprove, it’s a known fact that music and politics will forever be intertwined and the recent boycotting of Jordan Music Festival is a prime example of this. Lebanese artist Elissa was supposed to be performing in Jordan but then the Artist’s union in Lebanon apologized to the Jordanian union saying that she will be unable to perform. The reasons are based on a rumor that claims that the organizing company has Israeli connections and that they even organized concerts in Israel for their 60th anniversary!

Elissa is talented, beautiful and fashionable but a philanthropist? Now that is something I did not see coming. But indeed Elissa performed a charity concert in Kuwait recently to benefit the St. Jeuds Cancer Center for Children. Elissa seemed surprised at the amazing turnout and the number of welcoming fans that made her feel loved all the way from the airport to the hotel she was staying in.

In between good deeds Elissa will be attempting to film the music video for her new song which has seen immense success ‘Betmoon’! Elissa exclaimed that her appetite for work grew because of the stability that Lebanon is experiencing and so she will have a very eventful summer.

Rumor has it that Lebanese singer Elissa got a very interesting marriage offer from a rich guy from the Gulf ... and she refused it!
It seems the guy, which is an acquaintance of hers, popped the question and offered Elissa a sum of $1 Million and an island in her name! Irresistible, no? Well, yes!
It seems Elissa is aware of the conservative nature of the guy and thus predicted that he'd want her to quit singing!
Elissa preferred freedom and her career to all that money!
What do you think? Is this just a rumor? Or was there such an offer?

Usually interviews which are conducted by Egyptian journalist Mahmoud Saad are filled with heated questions and embarrassing moments for whoever is in the hot seat. And this was the case for Elissa too. For starters they spoke of her new album ‘Ayamy Beek’ which had seen amazing success till this day and Mahmoud asked Elisa what was up with the excessive singing in Egyptian. Elissa simply told him that she loved the Egyptian dialect whilst she felt she was not very good at the dialect of the gulf hence why she chooses not to sing in it.

The heat was turned on when Mahmoud Saad started asking about her problems with some of the musicians and how she accredited the work of one of the men who worked on her album to another. Elissa cleverly dodged the question claiming that only 3% of what we hear is true and that she credits all this drama to the success of her album as if it hadn’t succeeded no one would be bothered about their names being on the cover!

Last Friday, two of the most famous faces in the Arab world got together for a special episode of Al Arrab on MBC1, Syrian actor Tayem Hassan and Lebanese singer Elissa.
Elissa kicked off the show with a medley of her popular songs; Law Tiarafu, Kerlmalak, Taa and Khud Balak Aali.
As for Tayem, he made sure to be present although he was feeling a bit under the weather.

Nishan presented the two stars with the usual Al Arrab rose, Elissa dedicated it to herself and her mom, while Tayem dedicated it to his wife and his two kids.

Elissa mentioned that she considers Lebanese actor and director Wasim Tabara as her Godfather, while Tayem considers Syrian director Hatem Ali as his Godfather.

Photos Tayem Hassan And Elissa on Al Arrab

Well Lebanese singer Elissa has always been a big fan of adverts; she teamed up with companies like Lazurdi and Pepsi and made a hefty sum of money from them all. And now she has moved on to new horizons in the world of using her music persona to propagate products after being signed on as the ‘ambassador’ for Samsung’s new phone: the Impulz i450. Appropriately the angle that Samsung have given this new phone is that it provides their client with ‘The Ultimate Sound Experience’.

Successful and expensive … that’s the best way to describe the New Year concert of Lebanese singer Elissa and Egyptian singer Amr Diab! Ticket prices sky rocketed and reached a whopping $680/ticket! A new record for Rotana, which was the company behind this concert which was held in Dubai to ring in the New Year 2008.

Elissa was first to come on stage, she entertained the audience for 2 hours until the final countdown and celebrated the first hour of the new year with the rest of the audience. At 1.00 am, Amr Diab got on stage and the partying went on non-stop until 3.00 am in the morning…

These are some photos from this concert

Although we've been introduced to a couple of fragrances with the signature of Miriam Fares, Razan Mughrabi and others, but Elissa is the first Arab artist to have her own perfume by an international perfume company.
Elissa launched her fragrance Elle D'Elissa a couple of days ago in Dubai at a ceremony held at the Emirates Tower.
VIP's attending the event got their own exclusive bottle of the fragrance ... because it doesn't officially hit the markets until December!
The company that took it upon themselves to make this fragrance, is French perfume makers Georges Stahl.
Elle D'Elissa has been the fruit of a couple of years of hard work and loads of research.
Congratulations Elissa!

Photos of Elissa during the ceremony held at the Emirates Tower

Elissa recently performed a concert at ‘Mina El Salam’ in Dubai but it did not go as planned! After only 12 minutes of performing on stage the Maestro asked Elissa to leave with no explanation! Obviously Elissa refused and just kept going for an hour with the Maestro pestering her to leave after every song. This was apparently upon the request of director Nabeel Abou Samra, as the concert was being filmed by MBC.

Elissa gave up after an hour although she is used to being on stage for at least an hour and a half at each concert.

These are some photos of Lebanese singer Elissa during her summer tour in Tunisia where she held concerts in several cities in Tunisia like Sousse, Sfax and Gafsa.

Click here to see the photos

Lebanese singer Elissa has entered a war zone and her opponents are those women known as ‘seductive singers’ which include Nagla and Maria. The reason this battle erupted is that Elissa appeared in a well known soap commercial and one of the scenes had her in a bathtub. Not much attention would have been paid to this had Elissa not constantly and rightfully criticize all the singers like Maria who also appeared in bathtubs as part of their video clips!

How many times has Elissa worn a dress that has been worn before by another artist? The women Elissa has copied include Jennifer Lopez, Hayfa Wahbe, Nancy Ajram and just recently Najwa Karam! The first few times it happened we took it as an embarrassing coincidence in fact some of us actually felt bad for Elissa and blamed it on whoever was in charge of her wardrobe! But come on, it has happened over 8 times and it isn’t even that Elissa takes ideas of dresses from fellow socialites and uses them as an inspiration; she copies them exactly and wears them with pride. The most common star that Elissa has copied is Jennifer Lopez, Elissa copies Jennifer’s hair, look and clothes.

These are some recent photos of Elissa in the Maldives where it seems she was spending a summer vacation...

Thanks to Abed for the photos