Shakira Is Making New Music, Healing, and Having Her Say

Global pop superstar Shakira’s unique blend of Latin pop music infused with the dance moves of her Arabic heritage has blazed a trail in the music industry, bringing joy to millions of her fans around the world and heralding the boom in Latin music. Her stature reached a pinnacle in 2010 when she wrote and performed the theme song for the World Cup in South Africa, where she met and fell in love with Spanish soccer star Gerard Piqué. They eventually settled down together and started a family. In 2013, she told ELLE, “I even had lost my faith for a while…I started to think that there was no God. And suddenly I meet Gerard, and the sun comes out.”

Times have changed. Even though she is preparing to drop her first album in five years, in an exclusive interview with ELLE from her home in Barcelona, she describes the current moment as “her darkest hour.” In June, she announced her split from Piqué, amid a swirl of tabloid headlines, and they have yet to determine custody of their two sons, Milan, 9, and Sasha, 7. She is also headed to a showdown with the Spanish government over accusations that she evaded paying taxes—something she flatly denies. A trial date has not yet been set.

Dress, Miu Miu. Sandals, Aquazzura. Tiara, Messika. Rings, Messika by Kate Moss and Bulgari.

Shakira’s astonishing rise began when she was a teenager in Barranquilla, Colombia, doing gigs in mining towns until, at the age of 14, she heard a music executive was in town and did an impromptu audition. She then taught herself English and ultimately crossed over to U.S. fame in 2001 with her album Laundry Service. Pᴀssionately committed to both her charity work in building and running schools in her homeland and her political activism, it’s music, she says, that is now her main inspiration and solace.

She sat down with ELLE to talk publicly for the first time about her long-awaited new music, the collapse of her relationship, and why she’s determined to have her say about her finances.

I just saw you celebrated your dad’s birthday. You serenaded him with a bolero song. It was beautiful. He’s been a key figure in your life, right?
Yeah, he’s my hero. He’s an example of resilience and wisdom. He’s been my best friend, the person I got the best advice from. And, unfortunately, he had a really difficult year. He came to Barcelona when he heard about my family crisis, and he came to give me his support. But then he fell and had a subdural hematoma. And so he had brain surgery. And then a week later, he fell again and broke many bones in his face.

Oh, my goodness.
So it’s been really hard, you know, a hard year for him. But it’s a testament to his strength and his resilience. He still dances when he listens to music. He tries to sing along. And I’ve learned that to seniors, the best gift that you can give them is not only your presence and your company, but also music. When you think about the power that music has, it makes me realize, yeah, my job might not be as heroic as the job of a doctor or a nurse or in the middle of war, but it somehow has a very noble aspect, which is exactly that: to connect people to life.

I do want to ask you about your music, because you have a very eagerly awaited album. You haven’t had an album out since 2017.
Yeah, I have a full album’s worth of music that I’m so excited about. And some songs you’ll hear imminently, some are collaborations. Some are in English and some in Spanish, different genres. But I’m really, really thrilled about not only the body of work that I have right now to share with the people who are waiting for it, but also how gratifying the whole process has been for me. How therapeutic as well. I thought I was done with my album. But every time I get in the studio to do, like, one line or something, or to mix a song that’s almost ready to come out, then I end up with new music because I feel creative right now, and I feel that is an incredible outlet for me to make sense of things.

Tell me a little bit about that process that music is somehow therapy for you when you are going through a hard time. How do you tap into that and use that?
I think everyone has their own processes or their own mechanisms to process grief or stress or anxiety. We all go through stuff in life. But in my case, I think that writing music is like going to the shrink, only cheaper [laughs]. It just helps me process my emotions and make sense of them. And it helps me to heal. I think it’s the best medicine, and along with the love of my family and my kids that sustains me, music and writing music is definitely one of those tools—one of the few tools I have for survival in extreme conditions. It is sort of like driftwood for a man drowning in the sea, that piece of wood that you hang on to when you feel like you’re drowning. I think that music is a life raft. There have been days when I had to pick up the pieces of me from the floor. And the only way to do that, to actually do that, has been through music. You know, to really, like, put myself back together and to see myself in the mirror and know that I am a mom and my kids depend on me.

But also that I have so many things to say. And on those days when I felt that my strength was escaping me, like I didn’t have legs, those days I wrote songs, and I felt like I was revitalized and invigorated after a writing session. It’s like an injection of vitamins [laughs]. Sometimes I dreaded my work so much in the past because I just wanted to be there for my kids. I mean, I just wanted to cuddle with my kids in bed a little bit longer. And then I had to, like, get up and shoot a video and fulfill my obligations. But now I’m so thankful for my work, the possibility that it gives us to put ourselves back together and to realize who we are and why we’re here on this planet—what’s our purpose, our mission. I think you can find that reconstructive power in any kind of work. [In Spanish] El trabajo dignifica el hombre.

In this moment of my life, which is probably one of the most difficult, darkest hours of my life, music has brought light.”
It gives dignity to the person.
Exactly. And I feel like in this moment of my life, which is probably one of the most difficult, darkest hours of my life, music has brought light.

I want to talk about this dark moment for you. You’ve used words like “feeling like you’re drowning.” How are you doing with the dissolution of your relationship?
Oh, this is really hard to talk about personally, especially as this is the first time I’ve ever addressed this situation in an interview. I’ve remained quiet and just tried to process it all. Um, and yeah, it’s hard to talk about it, especially because I’m still going through it, and because I’m in the public eye and because our separation is not like a regular separation. And so it’s been tough not only for me, but also for my kids. Incredibly difficult. I have paparazzi camping outside, in front of my house, 24/7. And there’s not a place where I can hide from them with my kids, except for my own house. You know, we can’t take a walk in the park like a regular family or go have an ice cream or do any activity without paparazzi following us. So it’s hard. And I’ve tried to conceal the situation in front of my kids. I try to do it and to protect them, because that’s my number one mission in life. But then they hear things in school from their friends or they come across some disagreeable, unpleasant news online, and it just affects them, you know?

How have they been dealing with it? This must be incredibly difficult for them.
Yeah. I try to conceal the situation from them as much as I can. It’s really upsetting for two kids who are trying to process their parents’ separation. And sometimes I just feel like this is all a bad dream and that I’m going to wake up at some point. But no, it’s real. And what’s also real is the disappointment to see something as sacred and as special as I thought was the relationship I had with my kids’ father and see that turned into something vulgarized and cheapened by the media. And all of this while my dad has been in the ICU and I’ve been fighting on different fronts. Like I said, this is probably the darkest hour of my life. But then I think about all those women around the world who are going through hardship, who are going through a situation as bad as mine or as difficult as mine or worse.

For those women like me who believe in values like family who had the dream, the big dream of having a family forever, to see that dream broken or shredded into pieces is probably one of the most painful things that you can ever go through. But I think that women, we are resilient. You know, we have this resiliency that is just innate in all of us. And we are meant to nurture and to take care of those who depend on us. So you ask me how I manage this. And I just manage, I guess, reminding myself that I need to become an example for my kids, that I need to be what they want, what I want them to become. And I want to be there, also, for all the people who have shown me their love and support. That is my biggest strength. That’s my most powerful engine right now.