Yael Naim Coming to New York City's Highline Ballroom Today

Eight years ago, Steve Jobs handpicked one of the most unlikely songs to soundtrack an Apple spot. Whimsical and modest, Yael Naïm's folk-pop "New Soul" was more willfully analog than tech-savvy. But mostly, it was catchy-catapulting around the globe, from the northern and southern to eastern and western hemispheres. In the U.S. alone, it sat on three Billboard charts: the Hot 100, Adult Alternative, and Adult Top 40. "It was," Naïm says sweetly, "a miracle."

In retrospect, it feels more like fate. Born in France to Tunisian parents, raised in Israel, and residing in Paris since age 21, Naïm is a true citizen of the world who has forged for herself, as the New York Times attested, a "prestigious artistic career." Joined by her creative partner, musician-producer David Donatien, she recently debuted their third album, Older, to a packed crowd at Summer Stage in New York City's Central Park. There, to a global, culturally curious audience (Vogue once describe her as possessing a "powerful, operatic voice"), Naïm and Donatien performed their acclaimed new work, which soulfully chronicles life, death, and the transformation in between.