Aseel Hameem

Aseel Karim Hameem is an Iraqi singer, born in Baghdad on 6 October 1984, the daughter of the musician Karim Hameem. She started her professional career at the age of twenty-two and has released dozens of solo and joint songs in several Arabic dialects, besides singing the theme songs of many television series; her 2019 song "Ser Alhayah" became the most streamed song on YouTube by a female Arab artist. ^{1 2}

She was born in Baghdad; the English article specifies Adhamiyah as her birthplace. Her father, Karim Hameem, is a musician who taught and guided her, and her aunt is the broadcaster Suhair al-Qaisi. ^{1 2}

She was a contestant in the Arab Stars programme (Arabic: نجوم العرب) on MBC 1 with the Arab Mashreq team, and released her first solo song, "Balani Zemani", shortly afterwards. The Arabic article adds that she had a song of her own, "Radhi bi-Ta'dhibi", in the album "Rashed and His Loved Ones", with lyrics by the Emirati poet Masha'er Dubai and music by the Emirati Fayez al-Saeed. She has since released songs in different Arabic dialects. ^{1 2}

The Arabic article reports that she married the businessman Bakr al-Shahabi at a ceremony held in Erbil, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, on 12 December 2024, and that her husband has no connection to the artistic world. ²

Her solo and joint songs include "Balani Zemani", "Atali3 Bel3eon" and "Atrekni A7obak" with Ma'moun al-Nattah, "Qahar" with Ahmed al-Hermi, "Ya Hala" with Walid al-Shami, "Hawa Baghdad" with Nusrat al-Badr, "Almafroth" (2019), "Enta Al Saadah", "Enta Kolshay", "Zorouf" and "Yeshbahak Galbi" (2020), "Ehfaz Shakli", "Loqyak" and "Shkad Helw" (2021), and "Eii Enta" (2022). ^{1 2}

Her song "Ser Alhayah" (2019) was, as the English article reports from Arabsounds in August 2020, the most streamed song on YouTube by a female Arab artist, with more than 255 million views at that date. ¹

She has voiced the theme songs of many television series, among them Shara Alnufus (2008), Banat Sokar Banat (2011), Akoon Aw La (2012), Tawali Al-Lail (2013), Hawa Baghdad, Ahly W Nasy and Kan Khaled (2019), Tigris and Euphrates (2021), and Almas Maksoor and Raheeq (2022). ^{1 2}