Ninet Tayeb — singer, songwriter and actress — is one of Israel’s biggest stars. And that's not a hyperbole. After shooting to fame at the age of 20 in reality TV show Israeli Idol, her debut album went platinum in less than a day, and had five No. 1 singles. She then starred in a long-running TV show based on her life, acted in the film The Assassin Next Door and was nominated for Best Actress in the 2010 Israeli Theatre Awards. She’s received Israel’s “Favorite Music Act” at MTV Europe’s Music Awards twice. Even her relationships are high profile — when she was with actor Yehuda Levi, they were deemed Israel’s Brangelina.

Now, on the cusp of releasing her fifth album, Paper Parachutes (it will be her first to be released in the United States), Ninet says she has created an album with producer Joseph E-Shine that will allow people “to feel whatever they want to feel.” She adds that with her songs, written in English, not Hebrew, “I wanna be the channel to their deepest thoughts. I wanna make them feel alive.”

And she’s looking forward to performing it all live: “The live performance is my favorite part because everything is happening in the present,” she says. “You can’t go back, you can’t delete or change anything. What you see is what you get and I think that nowadays, in the world we are living in, the live shows are the reality. I wish people could be more present in the moment.”

Get to know Ninet a little better on the next page.