Omar Naber

Omar Naber is a Slovenian pop singer and songwriter, born Omar Kareem Naber on 7 July 1981 in Ljubljana. He has represented Slovenia at the Eurovision Song Contest twice, in 2005 and 2017.

His mother, Alenka Naber, is a piano teacher, and his father, a dentist, comes from Jordan. Omar sang in the school choir from his first year at school, gave his first solo performance in sixth grade and later sang in the RTV Slovenija youth choir and the youth choir Veter. He trained as a dental technician, but after a six-month internship decided that music was what he really wanted. He had been writing his own songs since sixteen, Green Day's "Basket Case" being one of the songs that set him on the way. In 1999 he formed his own band, and in 2001 he came second in the competition Kdo bo osvojil Triglav and signed to Nika Records. For years he also sang backing vocals for other Slovenian artists.

His breakthrough came in the talent contest Bitka talentov on the television show Spet doma, which he won on 5 December 2004 with "Sexed up". That took him to EMA 2005, which he won with "Stop". At the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 in Kyiv he finished 11th in the semi-final, at the time the best placing by a Slovenian male singer.

His first album, Omar (2005), with "Stop", "Krasen dan" and "Omar, ti teslo", sold more than 10,000 copies. Kareem followed in 2007, and Na glavo in 2014, with "Parfum" and "Sedem dni"; its English version, No Helmet, came out in the United Kingdom the same year. He kept returning to EMA: second in 2009 with "I Still Carry On", third in 2011 with "Bistvo skrito je očem" and third again in 2014 with "I Won't Give Up". In 2011 he sang the duet "Duša moje duše" with Nuša Derenda.

In 2017 he won EMA with "On My Way" and went back to Kyiv, becoming the second Slovenian after Darja Švajger to represent the country at Eurovision twice. This time he finished 17th of 18 in his semi-final, with 36 points.

Naber has given more than 1,400 concerts. On 10 November 2023 he celebrated eighteen years on stage with a concert at Cvetličarna in Ljubljana, which RTV Slovenija broadcast the following April.