"New Soul" is a song by the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

-Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i indie folk

Indie folk

Indie folk is a music genre that arose in the 1990s from singer/songwriters in the indie rock community showing heavy influences from folk music scenes of the 50s, 60s and early 70s, country music, and indie rock. A few early artists included Lou Barlow, Beck, Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith...

 singer Yael Naïm

Yael Naim

Yael Naïm , is a French-Israeli singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in 2008 in the US after her hit single "New Soul" was used by Apple in an advertising campaign for its MacBook Air. The song peaked at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100.-Biography:Yael Naïm was born in Paris, France to Tunisian Jewish...

, from her eponymous album

Yael Naim (album)

Yael Naim is the self-titled second studio album by Yael Naïm. It contains the single "New Soul", which gained widespread popularity due to being featured in Apple's MacBook Air video advertisement.- Track listing :# "Paris" - 3:08# "Too Long" - 4:43...

. The song has gained popularity in the U.S. following its use by Apple in an advertisement for their MacBook Air

MacBook Air

The MacBook Air family is a line of Apple ultraportable Macintosh notebook computers.The first-generation MacBook Air was a 13.3"-only model, previously promoted as the World's Thinnest Notebook, introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. It featured a custom Intel Merom CPU...

 laptop. In the song Naïm sings of being a new soul who has come into the world to learn "a bit 'bout how to give and take." However she finds that things are harder than they seem. The song, also featured in the films The House Bunny

The House Bunny

The House Bunny is a 2008 romantic comedy film directed by Fred Wolf, written by Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz, and starring Anna Faris as a former Playboy bunny who signs up to be the "house mother" of an unpopular university sorority after being conned by a rival into believing she's now...

and Wild Target

Wild Target

Wild Target is a 2010 comedy film, directed by Jonathan Lynn. It is based on the 1993 French film Cible Emouvante. Lucinda Coxon wrote the screenplay, and it was produced by Martin Pope and Michael Rose....

, features a prominent "la la la la" section as its hook. It remains Naïm's biggest hit single in the USA to date, and her only one to reach the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

.

Music video

The video shows Naïm moving into an empty apartment. She covers the walls in wallpaper depicting a lake surrounded by forest. She then begins unpacking several other things, including furniture, a piano, a goldfish in a bowl and a number of photographs of people, which she hangs on the wall. As she hangs the photographs, the people in the pictures are shown in real life, in the setting depicted in the pictures. Naïm then begins painting on the photographs, and whatever she paints appears with the people in real life. She removes one of the pictures to discover a hole in the wall, revealing the actual forest setting shown in the wallpaper. She pushes on the wall, and it falls away into the lake. The remaining walls fall onto the water leaving the floor of the apartment like a raft floating on the lake, together with her furniture. The people from her pictures reach her by boat. They climb onto the makeshift raft with her, as they all celebrate, dancing and playing instruments, whilst she empties the goldfish bowl into the lake.

In 2008 the video received strong airplay in MTV

MTV

MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

.

Chart performance

In the issue dated February 16, 2008, "New Soul" debuted on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

 at number 9, giving Naïm her first single ever to enter any U.S. chart. It reached #7 on the Hot 100 before falling to #42 the following week making it one of the largest falls from the top 10 in Billboard history. It later rebounded into the top 50 due to being featured on the Apple MacBook Air

MacBook Air

The MacBook Air family is a line of Apple ultraportable Macintosh notebook computers.The first-generation MacBook Air was a 13.3"-only model, previously promoted as the World's Thinnest Notebook, introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. It featured a custom Intel Merom CPU...

 commercials, but nonetheless the song spent a total of 19 weeks on the chart. It debuted at #44 on the Canadian Hot 100

Canadian Hot 100

The Canadian Hot 100 is a music singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine which ranks songs in Canada. The chart debuted in the Billboard issue dated June 16, 2007 and was made available for the first time via their online services on June 7, 2007...

, and jumped to #7 on the chart the following week. In her birth country of France, the single has reached #2 so far on the French Singles Chart. In February 2008, it debuted on the UK Singles Chart

UK Singles Chart

The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...

 at #42 and reached #30 one month later.

Charts

Chart (2008)	Peak position
Australian Singles Chart	29
Austrian Singles Chart	2
Belgian (Flanders) Singles Chart Ultratop 50 Ultratop 50 singles, often just Ultratop 50, is the weekly chart of fifty best-selling singles in Flanders, Belgium, and is produced and published by the Ultratop organization. The chart has existed since March 31, 1995...	7
Belgian (Wallonia) Singles Chart Ultratop Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts...	1
Billboard Eurochart Hot 100 Singles Eurochart Hot 100 Singles The European Hot 100 Singles has been compiled by Billboard and Music & Media magazine since March, 1984. The chart is based on national singles sales charts in 15 European countries: Austria, Belgium , Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden,...	3
Canadian Hot 100 Canadian Hot 100 The Canadian Hot 100 is a music singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine which ranks songs in Canada. The chart debuted in the Billboard issue dated June 16, 2007 and was made available for the first time via their online services on June 7, 2007...	7
Dutch Singles Chart	12
French Singles Chart	2
Hungarian Airplay Chart Mahasz Mahasz is the Hungarian music industry association, founded in 1992. Mahasz hands out the Hungarian Music Awards and maintains the music charts for Hungary....	7
Italian Singles Chart Italy Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...	6
New Zealander Singles Chart	21
Swiss Singles Chart	5
UK Singles Chart UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...	30
U.S. United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...  Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Hot 100 Billboard Hot 100 The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...	7
U.S. Billboard Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks Adult Top 40 is a variation on the United States Billboard charts...	16

Year-end charts

Chart (2008)	Rank
German Singles Chart Media Control Charts The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie...	33