If there’s one word that singer-songwriter Gal de Paz wants you to remember when you think about her, it’s “uncompromising.” Oh – and “badass.”
De Paz has been around for a while and may be familiar to some as an Israeli rocker from previous work with her band, the Paz Band. Or some might remember her from the hip hop-funk sounds of the Lucille Crew collective, of which she is the lead singer. It could also be from that time in 2017 when she opened for Aerosmith at Park Hayarkon.
But likely the way many know her is for her song, “Bring Them Home,” which came out in November after the October 7 massacre.
De Paz says that following the Hamas attacks she felt compelled to do something, but she didn’t know what. “I’m not in the army, I can’t help. I went and volunteered packing stuff for families, but it didn’t feel like enough,” she says. “I was like, what do I do in life? What’s my purpose in this world? I want to write a song. That’s what I do.”
The song, she says, just came “vomiting out… I was crying, ‘F*** this s***. What’s up with this war?’” She was at home after being at her mother’s house watching the news. “I was depressed. This was before anyone came back. So I was thinking about the hostages – is this it? It’s been a week. It’s been two weeks…” and she sat at her piano and got it in one take.
The song became an anthem of the movement to return the hostages, shared by celebrities such as Noa Tishby, Mayim Bialik, Michael Rapaport, and Debra Messing, among others. “‘Bring Them Home’ is the most important, saddest song I’ve written and I wish I wouldn’t have to play it anymore,” De Paz says. “But I will keep playing it until they’re all out.”
In the decade-and-a-half since her first album release, De Paz has left a unique mark on the Israeli music scene, which must qualify her as “badass.” The years have also given her a lesson in being “uncompromising” when making the music she loves. Her debut album, Blues to Dream (Blues Lahlom, 2010), was released in Hebrew because that was what everyone told her to do, though she preferred writing and singing in English. “Then I was like, ‘okay, I’m ready to do what I want. From this day on I’m only going to make albums that I would buy, period.’”
This was followed by three English rock albums that she recorded with The Paz Band – Goldie (2013), Down the Rabbit Hole (2016), and Supply & Demand (2018) – and finally, her 2022 album, Uncovered, which was just De Paz and her piano: “I was kind of musically reborn when I didn’t have my band with me.” Now with her latest album, Very That, she’s adding a new descriptor to the mix – “diva.”
One week before album release
IT’S A hot summer afternoon in Tel Aviv’s Florentine neighborhood. Two tiny dogs, Fievel and Genie, come running, yapping at the visitor at De Paz’s door as she gently shoos them away.
A week away from the release of her album and less than a month before her launch show at the Barby – she’s ready to give listeners something that’s a departure from her usual sound. Two singles – the title track “Very That,” and “Long Nails” – have already hit the air.
While “Long Nails” is a song that De Paz says she wrote to “pick myself up,” “Very That” is a song that De Paz wrote before the Gaza War, whose lyrics took on another level following the attacks. “I was talking about what was going on in social media – that things are so fake and people are chasing something that’s unreachable. And then you had October 7 and I was like, ‘oh my God, this gets a totally different meaning,’” she says, referring to the hypocrisy of the global LGBT community’s largely anti-Israel stance.
As De Paz talks, her dogs claim nearby spots on the couch. A mahogany-colored upright piano is pushed against one wall, on top of it are two white mannequin heads with the diva wigs used in her latest videos.
If the Gal De Paz that people know is a rocker, or a funky jazz soul singer, this new album will introduce them to Gal De Paz the diva, and her fun, pink-loving, girly alter-ego (with a side of gospel).
“I’ve loved pink my whole life, but with The Paz Band and Lucille Crew, it didn’t have a place to shine,” De Paz says. Drag is a theme in the two new singles as well as in the album art, and drag queens Enita Wintour, Glory Hollywood, Itai Barr, and Christina Fox all make appearances.
Considering that De Paz is the daughter of a former opera singer, her embrace of drag’s campy theatricality in the new album makes sense. “I used to hang out with my mother at the opera,” she remembers. “The Israeli Opera – that’s my childhood. I loved the costumes and the wigs… I used to stay for hours and stare at them.”
The next day, De Paz and her band are set up in a space on the top floor of a building in south Tel Aviv. Sticker art covers a wall. There’s Bamba and cookies and sunflower seeds and smokes – everything a band needs to power through a pre-show rehearsal.
De Paz is there with her manager, producer, partner, and co-binger for episodes of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Isgav Dotan. He is also the director of her videos (and producer of Lucille Crew). As she says, “He’s the other 50% of this album… He knows me inside-out, so it was easy for him to step into my world. And together, we created this thing.”
De Paz, dressed in grey workout tights, a sports bra, and a jacket tied around her waist, snaps a selfie at the mic. They’re running through “Very That,” the drummer is on the beat, and Dotan is following on a laptop, pumping his finger in the air like a conductor, giving the saxophonist her cues.
“It’s a song that’s a little gentle, it needs to be played softly,” De Paz tells the band, “This is not the place or time for rock-and-roll.”
With the release of Very That, De Paz has put out an album with a different sound, for a different time, that tells a different story. And even with the seemingly fun, nonchalant approach of the singles “Very That” and “Long Nails,” De Paz says that this album is in some ways her most personal yet.
“It is exactly what I’ve been through this past year and what I’m going through now. I think people are going to be really surprised about the rest of the album. It’s very deep. It’s also a sexy album, and very emotional.”
Gal De Paz will be performing at the Barby on September 21. For tickets: https://barby.co.il/show/4897