Anna Zak

Zak was born in 2001 in Sochi, Russia, and moved to Israel with her parents, older sister, and grandparents; the family settled in Ashdod, where she attended Makif H high school.[2] Accounts place her arrival in Israel at approximately nine or ten years old.[1][2] Her paternal family is Jewish, while her maternal family is not; in a 2018 interview, she said she felt connected to Israel and had not considered conversion.[2]

Before moving to Israel, Zak studied music, performed, and recorded songs in Russia.[4] She had belonged to a girls’ singing group and recalled imagining that emigration would end her music career.[5] She described learning Hebrew and finding her place in Israel as difficult, saying that the experience undermined her confidence in singing and made her worry about how her accent would sound in music.[4] She also recalled being teased after arriving in Ashdod.[5]

At a young talent competition in Eilat when she was 12, Zak recalled going out of tune, putting down the microphone, and running offstage.[4] She described the experience as traumatic and said she did not want to sing again until she tried four years later.[4] Her mother and older sister became involved in her career, and while still a high-school student she helped her mother pay rent and household expenses.[5]

Zak began attracting public attention in 2014 through an appearance in the second season of the children’s reality program “The Boys and the Girls.”[2] Around age 13, she began building a social-media audience; a dance video she posted at 15 later went viral on TikTok.[6] She later said that she had been managing a career since age 12 and had learned to organize her time across several platforms.[7]

In 2017, she ranked first among Israeli Instagram influencers in a SpyTheNet report, with one million followers and an average of 85,000 interactions per photograph or video.[2] That year, the Israeli Internet Association also recognized her as the most influential Israeli Instagrammer.[1] She won first place at the first Musical.ly championship event in April 2017.[2]

Her modeling and advertising work included campaigns for Veet, Skin Girl, Yatvata chocolate milk, Scoop, Adika, Office Depot, and TOPTEN.[2] In September 2017, SPRING released a perfume collection bearing her name.[2] By 2020, she had 1.3 million Instagram followers and 4.7 million TikTok followers; she said she felt responsible toward young followers who told her they looked up to her.[7] A September 2023 profile recorded four million TikTok followers and more than one million Instagram followers.[1]

Zak entered the music industry in 2017 with her debut single, “Money Honey.”[1] She recalled that the song emerged from a television program for aspiring singers.[4] A 2023 Jerusalem Post profile said that in 2017 Zak represented Israel in the international band Now United and eventually led the project.[1] Ynet’s biography offers a different account, saying she reached the final audition stages but chose not to join after learning she would serve only as a presenter and would not perform with the group.[2]

In July 2018, Zak, then 17, was among three teenage Israeli pop singers scheduled to open for the British band Clean Bandit in Rishon Lezion.[8] By then, “Bang Bang” and “Money Honey” had become popular online.[8] A 2020 interview reported that she had released eight singles, collectively attracting millions of views and streams.[7]

Her recorded repertoire includes “Hailey” (היילי), an English-language commercial recording dated 2020 with a duration of two minutes and 26 seconds.[9] Other cataloged performances include “עוד אחד,” “בחורים יפים,” “Bang bang,” “כל הבאז,” and “Veni vidi vici.”[9]

The 2022 release “Lech Lishon” marked a turning point in Zak’s singing career.[1][10] She said she had previously felt that people did not take her seriously as a singer, and recalled crying after the song entered the Galgalatz playlist and subsequently reached first place on a chart.[10] It was created at Jordy’s studio with Ron Biton and Itay Shimoni; Biton, Shimoni, and Yarden (Jordy) Peleg received the lyrics and music credits.[10]

In September 2022, “Lech Lishon” ranked as the most-played song on Israeli radio over the preceding 12 months.[3] The AcumOnAir rankings for the Hebrew year 5782 placed it first among Israeli songs, while Zak’s “Mi Zot” (“Who Is She?”) ranked 13th.[11] Five women appeared in that year’s top ten, compared with one in the preceding year.[11] “Lech Lishon” later received the Association of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers in Israel’s award for the most-played Israeli creation, and its music video had exceeded 20 million views by September 2023.[10][1]

For “Mi Zot,” Zak decided to use her own telephone number in the lyrics after discussing the idea of including a real number.[4] She recalled that her telephone and WhatsApp were overwhelmed upon release, with 13,000 messages arriving on WhatsApp.[4] She retained the number for a time to communicate with listeners before her team transferred it to the Otot association as a support line for young people.[4] Zak recounted being told that a caller had found a home through the association that day.[4] “Mi Zot” also appeared among Israel’s top music videos in YouTube’s 2022 annual rankings, a list on which six of the ten videos were by women.[12]

In 2020, Zak began presenting “The Boys and the Girls,” the program on which she had earlier appeared as a participant.[2][6] That year, she also played the central role of Shikma in the youth series “Ziggy.”[2] She enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in 2020 and completed her military service in March 2022.[2]

In 2022, she said she was preparing a music-centered series with the working title “La’uf al Anna” (“Fly with Anna”), based on her life but using a fictional plot.[4] A later role was singer Sarah Hacohen in the Keshet 12 suspense series “Murder at the Dead Sea.”[13] In a 2026 interview, Zak described it as her first acting role intended for an adult audience; she also performed the series’ theme song, “Lo Nir’eh et Mahar” (“We Won’t See Tomorrow”).[13]

In 2022, Zak participated in Meta’s “Sharing Memories” project alongside other singers and online personalities.[14] Participants met and interviewed Holocaust survivors, then shared their stories through Instagram Stories.[14] The initiative sought to bring survivor testimony to younger audiences and increase awareness of Holocaust remembrance and survivors’ living conditions.[14]

In 2019, a clip of Zak performing a song for the forthcoming Festigal holiday show drew debate over changes to its wording.[15] The song’s title had been changed to “I Feel Like Dancing,” and the word “freicha” did not appear in the performance clip.[15]