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CNN Live Event/Special
Abu Dhabi's Thriving Music Scene; Cities Around the World Celebrate New Year's Eve. Aired 1-1:30p ET
Aired December 31, 2025 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:03]
JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Welcome back to all of our viewers all around the world. We are having one heck of a party as we ring in the new year every corner of the globe. You are invited.
I'm John Berman on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi.
BECKY ANDERSON, CNN HOST: And I'm Becky Anderson with John here.
There's a fantastic crowd here ready to welcome in 2026 with food, with fireworks, with music in less than two hours from now.
BERMAN: Yes, two hours. We are counting down. I have got the hat ready, although they told me I can't put it on to the very last hour.
ANDERSON: Oh, really? Why? You can.
BERMAN: While we wait here for midnight in Abu Dhabi, it is already 2026 elsewhere around the globe.
ANDERSON: That's right.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Five, four, three, two, one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: That was the scene in Sydney. Look at that, one of the most dazzling fireworks displayed really anywhere in the world. And it wasn't just in Sydney.
Shanghai Disney resort pulled out all the stops to celebrate. Look at that.
ANDERSON: Fabulous fireworks.
BERMAN: Fireworks over the Magic Kingdom there, Cinderella's castle. I don't know whose castle, one of their castles. Someone's got a castle there. Their fireworks show was called Ignite the New Year.
ANDERSON: That's right. New Zealanders were among the first in the world, of course, to celebrate the arrival of the 2026, a fireworks show lighting up Auckland's Harbour Bridge. I always love this one. I always love those fireworks coming out of the bridge.
And the Sky Tower, of course, there right now. Two cities half-a-world apart are making final preparations for what are these magnificent New Year's events, world record fireworks in the one and the iconic ball drop in the other.
And we have got Leila my colleague at Al Wathba, which has set itself the goal of beating its own fireworks record. So, let's check back in with her.
And who have you got with you tonight, Leila?
LEILA GHARAGOZLOU, CNN PRODUCER: Yes, I'm here with Hamdah Abdulrahman. She's a former CNN Academy graduate. You can actually hear some fireworks right now. They're doing fireworks at the top of every hour in the lead-up to the big New Year's finale.
But this is our first time at the Sheikh Zayed Festival. So Hamdah is going to tell us a little bit about the things that we can't miss that we will be going to while we are off-camera.
HAMDAH ABDULRAHMAN, CNN ACADEMY 2023 GRADUATE: Yes, so, for the first time here, I would definitely recommend checking out the traditional performances and also traditional food such as luqaimat.
It's a really delicious Emirati dessert. And also as you walk around the festival, you will notice different pavilions from different countries. So, this festival not only showcases the Emirati culture, but it also combines different cultures from all over the world.
GHARAGOZLOU: So, as you can see, it is a global celebration. People have been camping out here for a while. So everyone's very excited to see the final fireworks spectacular, hopefully breaking a Guinness World Record.
BERMAN: Yes, I'm putting the money on the over there. I'm taking the over and the over/under of them breaking the Guinness World Records there, to be sure, Leila. Great to see you there.
(CROSSTALK)
And from one fireworks trend to another just iconic moment, my friend Brynn Gingras is in Times Square.
Brynn, you there? Brynn, hey.
BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I am. Guys, I'm sorry.
ANDERSON: Are you with us, Brynn?
GINGRAS: I didn't know you were coming to me. I'm here. Hi. Hi.
BERMAN: No.
GINGRAS: Can you hear me?
BERMAN: What's shaking? I can hear you all the way from Times Square.
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
GINGRAS: OK, good.
They are finally, guys, letting people inside these pens. This is where the party, of course, as you guys know it, is going to happen when it strikes -- when the clock strikes midnight. And I just found two friends from Tampa, Florida, who came up here north to the freezing cold.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, the freezing cold.
(CROSSTALK)
GINGRAS: Although I heard it's very cold at home too.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it's cold, but not as cold as here.
(CROSSTALK)
GINGRAS: So how are you dressing for this occasion?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Layers and layers and layers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
GINGRAS: How long did you guys wait outside the pen before you were about to come in?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have no idea.
GINGRAS: Really?
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A couple hours.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A few hours, yes. I mean, it wasn't like 6:00, but it was a while.
GINGRAS: Is this a bucket list item? Have you done this?
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For me, it is. I wanted to do this for 50 years.
GINGRAS: Fifty years?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
GINGRAS: And you're finally here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, finally here, yes. GINGRAS: How does it feel?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fantastic. Look at this. I mean, yes, fantastic.
GINGRAS: I have to admit, you guys have some pretty good seats here. You're like right on the edge.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We worked at it.
GINGRAS: I'm proud of you. I have to...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. I'm proud of me too.
(LAUGHTER)
GINGRAS: Tell me. The question that I'm always asking people is you can't leave the pens once you're in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's correct.
GINGRAS: And we have quite a while until midnight.
[13:05:00]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
GINGRAS: How are we handling the usual business?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No water.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No water, nothing to drink, a cup if it gets real bad.
GINGRAS: It sounds like torture. And yet you wanted to do it for 50 years.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I can deal with 12 hours, 14 hours of not going, yes. At my age...
GINGRAS: It sounds like you have been training for this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No water.
(LAUGHTER)
GINGRAS: What are you most excited about?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This. Look at this.
GINGRAS: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two-fifty America is wonderful. GINGRAS: I love it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
GINGRAS: Well, I have to tell you, I have been here a couple years when it strikes midnight, and there's nothing like it. You guys are in for a treat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Excellent.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am thrilled.
GINGRAS: All right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So thank you guys. Happy new year.
GINGRAS: Well, happy new year. Happy new year.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Happy new year to you. Take care.
GINGRAS: Yes, guys, I mean, look, they are just now finally letting people rush in. I got to tell you, people have been waiting hours on the outside avenues of Times Square waiting to get in.
They go through several series of security measures and then they sprint to try to get a spot like these two gentlemen have right in view of that ball that's going to drop at midnight. And, of course, we know three tons of confetti will fall from the sky. And it is quite the party. You guys know all about it. You can probably envision it.
We can't wait for it here on the ground -- guys.
ANDERSON: And no loo, no loo, Brynn, for 12 hours. Is that what those guys said?
GINGRAS: Yes, no, loo. They're not allowed to leave these pens once they are in for security measures. It's quite fascinating.
I have done this for several years. I get many different stories, no water, adult diapers.
ANDERSON: Yes.
GINGRAS: There's little bottles full of pee sometimes. Like, there's lots of answers. But everybody has their own way to deal with it. And I will say, when it turns midnight here, it's worth it. It becomes worth it.
ANDERSON: I'm just crossing my legs here.
(LAUGHTER)
BERMAN: I know. Exactly. That was the involuntary crossing of the legs just as a reaction there.
I have to say, in New York, we do things a little differently. ANDERSON: Yes, right.
BERMAN: It's not just a celebration. It's a biology experiment all wrapped into one.
(LAUGHTER)
ANDERSON: Oh, brilliant.
Brynn, lovely. Thank you, mate, and back to you in the hours to come.
So much more of CNN's special New Year's Eve coverage is coming up. We're going to speak with a music producer and an emerging singer with PopArabia, and later, another performance by Mayssa Karaa, who has been part of the CNN soundtrack tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:12:10]
ANDERSON: Well, welcome back. It is 10 past 10:00 here in Abu Dhabi, which means the new year is less than two hours away.
A couple of guests with us for you now. They are part of a dynamic Abu Dhabi-based music company, PopArabia. Here is a quick sample of their music.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: All right, joining us now is Spek, the founder and CEO of PopArabia. We also want to welcome singer-songwriter Joury here as well.
It's great to have you here.
JOURY, MUSICIAN: Thank you guys for having us.
ANDERSON: Hello, guys.
BERMAN: Happy new year.
JOURY: Happy new year. Happy almost 2026.
SPEK, THE FOUNDER AND CEO, POPARABIA: Yes.
BERMAN: Just, Spek, talk to me about the music scene here in Abu Dhabi.
SPEK: Well, we set up PopArabia 14 years ago with support from Abu Dhabi. And the scene out here has really grown by leaps and bounds, especially I'd say in the past three to four years. The music industry in the Middle East has been the fastest growing in
the world for two out of the last three years. So it has become very quickly a very dynamic scene, a lot of local talents.
And we expect that, over the course of the next decade, Arabic music will not be a niche just for the Middle East, but rather be an exportable commodity around the world.
ANDERSON: And, Joury, you blend Arabic music with sort of Eastern influence and others. Just talk a little bit about your music.
JOURY: What I try to do is kind of take Arabic music, which is a very heavy genre, and it's not always accessible to everyone. So what we try to do is we try to make it -- fuse with like Western structures, for example, or modern production techniques so that it's basically digestible and accessible to everyone, not just the Middle East.
ANDERSON: Yes.
BERMAN: Talk to me about the music camps that you have been part of.
JOURY: So one of the most notable experiences I have had was the SAWT camp that PopArabia hosted in collaboration with the Creative Media Authority here in Abu Dhabi. It was honestly an amazing experience. I got to collaborate with musicians from all over the world. It was something I'm not really used to.
They just basically put you together with strangers and you're like, go make music, but it was amazing. It's really sparked my creativity.
SPEK: And I have to say that Joury was a bit of a star out of that camp, and that it's a great opportunity to meet talent for us, to meet emerging talent that is just grassroots, put them into an environment where they're working with others and see how they work.
And through that experience, we were able to find her. And we're now developing her as an artist on the PopArabia label and have her producing music with Zeid Hamdan, another producer that we work with. So it's been a great experience for both of us.
[13:15:05]
ANDERSON: So you have been around since, what, 2011, as I understand it.
SPEK: That's right, yes.
ANDERSON: Canadian originally. You're a rapper, a hip-hop artist originally.
SPEK: Yes, yes, yes. That's right.
ANDERSON: So just talk to us about how the scene has changed here in the last 15 years and what you do expect. You talk about these forecasts, but what do you expect going forward? What do you think is going to work? SPEK: Well, I tell people that my experience as a hip-hop artist in
Canada informs me a lot about the way that I look at the music scene out here.
Twenty years ago, when I was rapping, it wasn't a thing to say you were a rapper from Canada. People -- you sort of got laughed out of the room. And over the past 20 years, we have seen people like Drake or...
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
SPEK: We have seen a lot of Canadian hip-hop become global. And in the same -- I feel that it's very analogous to what we're seeing with Arabic music, where you didn't think of the region as something that could sort of be global.
But now, with the advent of, say, K-pop or with Latin music, what we're seeing is that we're -- we have a region that has about 480 million people. That is bigger than the United States is as a market of 320 million people. And so, over time, we think that the streaming numbers are undeniable.
Once the Middle East fully comes online and has the same amount of time to connect onto these streaming platforms, what will happen eventually is Arabic artists are going to be just as streamed or more streamed than Anglo-American acts. And that will change the way we define pop, which segues nicely into calling the company PopArabia, the idea that it crosses over into something that's bigger than just something local.
BERMAN: Ah. I see a business model right there at work.
Look, I didn't know that this was the fastest growing region for music around the world. I find that fascinating.
I find it fascinating, Joury, that you sort of think about different audiences when you write.
JOURY: Yes.
BERMAN: Can you see -- or what do you hear from different parts of the world and different people reacting to your music?
JOURY: I kind of hope to convey -- in my music, what I want to convey is emotions that, for me, maybe I wouldn't just say out loud. So I kind of view Arabic music as something that it's just very powerful.
And I hope to kind of make it just universal and make my music something that anyone can listen to and relate somehow.
ANDERSON: And how important is it to you that you sing both in English and in Arabic? And how important do you think the Arabic language -- what's the growth for Arabic-language music?
JOURY: Yes.
SPEK: I'm biased here on this one, right?
And as a Canadian who is an English speaker, I really feel like it's a it's yesterday's paradigm to be thinking that the only way to be global is to sing in English.
ANDERSON: Absolutely.
SPEK: I just think when I meet young artists, I tell them, I actually think you should be focusing on the Arabic language, the sounds.
And what we have seen is that people are sort of tired of music sounding formulaic and sounding the same old, same old. And what we're finding is that, when we buy these music catalogs that have decades of different eras behind them, nowadays, to contextualize it into a modern context might mean sampling something that sounds different and mixing that with English.
But I tell people that I don't think your -- the future is written by this idea that pop music has got to be English language. I think the complete opposite, actually.
ANDERSON: Yes. Joury?
JOURY: Yes, I actually totally agree.
Actually, Spek encouraged me to write more in Arabic. And kind of like I write specifically in the Egyptian dialect because Arabic is a very rich language with so many different dialects. So I feel like, living in this region and just speaking in my native tongue, which I actually don't -- I didn't know I could really access it this much in my music.
It's really important to me. And even the idea of fusions, I agree with Spek. It doesn't always have to be language. So we also use different Arabic instruments, like the oud or the qanun, which also gives that fusion idea.
SPEK: Having said that, collaboration is another thing as well. We live in a big world these days. And people are D.M.ing each other and sending tracks to each other. And so the future, I think, is going to be collaborative experiences with people, where maybe one person doesn't sing in English, but they're working with somebody who speaks in English.
BERMAN: As someone who barely speaks one language, I have to say I'm incredibly impressed that you could write music in more than one and two at the same time.
How about -- in this part of the world, one of the things that struck me being here just for a few days this time is, especially in Abu Dhabi, the fusion between the past and the future. Do you try to strike a balance in your music, or is it all about going forward?
[13:20:09] JOURY: I feel I don't really think actively when I'm making music to include a balance, but I kind of find myself subconsciously gravitating towards older styles of music.
For example, I'm really getting into classical Arab music and the style of tarab, which means just classical, old Arabic singing, kind of reviving those old melodies that are actually timeless.
BERMAN: Beautiful.
ANDERSON: And, Joury, you grew up here in a society of some 200 nationalities. So I'm sure, in growing up here, you have got this kind of innate sense of blending anyway.
JOURY: Yes.
ANDERSON: I'm sure you have taken a lot of sort of sense from those that you have been around as you have grown up. Look, it's been amazing having you guys. You have had a terrific 2025, as you have.
Mabrouk, as they would say here.
SPEK: Thank you.
ANDERSON: What's -- 2026, what are you hoping for? What resolutions, very briefly?
JOURY: I'm excited to make more music...
BERMAN: Good answer.
JOURY: ... and send a message to everyone, yes.
SPEK: We're growing as a company. And we're going to be expanding and growing as a team across the region, looking to do global things And through our rights organization, ESMAA, we're going to be protecting rights as well and looking to how we can protect artists' rights in this region in a way that wasn't the case before.
ANDERSON: Yalla. Let's do it. Good luck, both of you.
JOURY: Thank you.
BERMAN: It's great to meet you.
(CROSSTALK)
ANDERSON: Happy new year.
JOURY: Thank you for having us.
BERMAN: Can't wait to stream some of the music very, very soon.
And from music to film, we want to show you the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2025, according to Box Office Mojo. The top two are sequels, "Ne Zha" number two. I don't even know what that one is. Do you?
ANDERSON: "Ne Zha 2" and "Zootopia 2."
BERMAN: Two.
ANDERSON: I didn't know what the first one was. I have to say my kids watched the "Zootopia 2" the other day, both sequels, both animated.
BERMAN: All right, then legacy epics hold a lot of these spots.
ANDERSON:
BERMAN: "Jurassic World Rebirth" at number five "Avatar: Fire and Ash" at number six. And number 10 is "Superman" from CNN's current parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
And my favorite, because it has to do with Abu Dhabi, is number nine, "F1," the movie which was shot here at the Yas Marina Circuit, the home of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, where we spent a big chump -- chunk, I should say, of that day.
ANDERSON: And do you know what that top movie, the animated adventure comedy sequel, made, John?
BERMAN: I have no idea. I didn't even know the movie.
(CROSSTALK)
ANDERSON: Any guesses?
BERMAN: None.
ANDERSON: All right. It made over $2.1 billion globally.
Look, my favorite movie this year -- and I didn't see very many, I have to say, because I have been quite busy, "One Battle After Another." It's not in that list. I don't think it was a massive grosser, but, boy, did Leonardo DiCaprio pull it out of the can.
I mean, what an actor he is. And you saw this comedic value out of this guy that I have never seen before.
BERMAN: I think he's going to turn out to be a pretty successful actor. I think he's got a future, that guy, that Leonardo DiCaprio.
(LAUGHTER)
BERMAN: My favorite, and I don't think we have a clip of it, "Dead Man's Wire," which is the movie I happened to see at the end of the year, which is just a wonderful sort of period piece from the 1970s in the United States.
ANDERSON: Yes.
BERMAN: I highly recommend it to anyone.
ANDERSON: Nice.
(CROSSTALK)
ANDERSON: All right. Well, listen, it's been great having our guests with us.
Let's listen now to singer Mayssa Karaa, who's been sort of the music bed, as it were, for our New Year's Eve programming here out of Abu Dhabi, who recorded a special show, or a special song, I should say, for this show. Have a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYSSA KARAA, MUSICIAN: This song is one of my originals. It's called "B'ismak," which means your name. It's composed by Lebanese composer, Rayan Habre, and produced by Yarub Smarait, who's leading our band for tonight.
The song speaks about -- it's a love song, and it talks about a girl that is secretly in love with another guy. Mostly, the sentence that she repeats throughout the song is, whenever I call someone, I call your name. Here's "B'ismak."
(MUSIC)
[13:25:00]
(MUSIC)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
