Amid the public breakup and looming trial, Shakira is having a great year
By all accounts, 2023 was going to be a tough year for Shakira. She and her long-term partner, Spanish soccer player Gerard Piqué, were in the midst of a very public split, and the pop superstar was also facing trial in Spain over alleged tax fraud.
But less than two weeks into the new year, Shakira embarked on a record-breaking collaboration – with in-demand Argentine DJ-producer Bizarrap – that put the now 46-year-old singer on track to achieve one of the best years of her career. A highlight occurred Tuesday at MTV’s annual Video Music Awards, where the Colombia native performed and accepted the lifetime achievement award.
There was nothing subtle about “Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” which mentions Piqué’s new, then 23-year-old girlfriend by name and directly addresses her ex: “You left me with a mother-in-law as a neighbor, with the press at my door and in debt to the estate.”
For any other pop star, releasing an impactful diss track alongside a producer known for working primarily with reggaeton and Latin trap stars might be seen as a risky move. But for Shakira, whose work is characterized by global, genre-bending music and pointed lyrics, it was all (smart) business as usual.
Shakira rose to fame as a teenager in Colombia, where she recorded her first album, “Magia,” when she was just 13 years old. With her third and fourth works – “Pies Descalzos” (“Bare Feet”) and “Dónde Están” – she achieved commercial success los Ladrones?” (“Where are the Thieves?”) – established her reputation as a gifted songwriter and “rockera “, whose singing earned comparisons to that of Alanis Morissette. “Pies Descalzos,” released in 1995, included songs like the lovesick “Antologia” (“Anthology”) and “Se Quiere, Se Mata,” which tells the story of a teenage girl who dies from an abortion she had secretly had.
The album put Shakira on the radar of music manager Emilio Estefan, who had overseen the highly successful English-language crossover of his wife Gloria Estefan and other Latin music stars and saw similar crossover potential in the “Pies Descalzos” singer.
With Estefan on board as manager and executive producer, Shakira recorded “Dónde Están los Ladrones?” The 1998 album was reminiscent of the thoughtful songwriting of Pies Descalzos, but leaned more heavily on Rock en Español. In “Octavo Día” (“Eighth Day”), Shakira sings about God taking a day off after creating the world, only to return to find his creation in turmoil; In “Inevitable,” the singer confesses a past love: “I can’t find a way to forget you / ‘Cause continuing to love you is inevitable.”
“Dónde” charted on the Billboard 200 charts and received the support of then-Sony Music chief Tommy Mottola, who told the Los Angeles Times that Shakira was “absolutely brilliant as an artist.” The 1999 article also cited Mottola’s prescient prediction that “Latin music is the reservoir of talent that can become crossover pop stars and global pop stars of the future.”
If “Pies Descalzos” and “Dónde” made Shakira a household name in Latin America (and in Latin American communities in the United States), it was the bilingual “Laundry Service,” released in 2001, that made Shakira a force in global pop. The following year, she took the stage at the VMAs for the first time and performed a belly dancing version of “Objection (Tango)”, the album’s fourth single and one of several tracks – including “Whenever, Wherever” – that were released in English and Spanish . “Ojos Así”, also translated into both languages, is a nod to Shakira’s Lebanese origins and contains several verses in Arabic. “Laundry Service” peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and led to the singer’s first hits — “Underneath Your Clothes,” “Objection (Tango) and “Whenever, Wherever” — on the Hot 100.
Like the Grammys, where “Laundry Service” failed to receive an album of the year nomination despite its popularity, the VMAs have historically had difficulty recognizing the global popularity of Latin music, particularly when that music is primarily in Spanish. (“Despacito” was famously rejected at the 2017 ceremony, despite being considered the song of the summer – and beyond – that year.) That has gradually changed in recent years, as the VMAs have featured performances from reggaeton stars like Maluma, Ozuna (who performed alongside Catalan pop superstar Rosalía in 2019) and Bad Bunny, who performed with his “Oasis” co-star J Balvin at the same ceremony.
Shakira was undoubtedly a driving force in the journey from the ’90s Latin crossover that brought the likes of Gloria Estefan and Ricky Martin to fame beyond Latin America (albeit with predominantly English-language catalogs), to the new generation of Latin stars performing exclusively in Spanish. Shakira continued to combine English and Spanish on subsequent albums and became the first VMAs act to perform entirely in Spanish, with “La Tortura” – a reggaeton-influenced duet with Alejandro Sanz – from her 2005 album Fijación Oral, Vol. 1.” (A companion album, “Oral Fixation, Vol. 2,” contained English-language tracks).
While not all of her fans appreciated her genre-hopping, Shakira’s career has benefited from her early embrace of reggaeton, the once-underground genre that now dominates the global pop landscape. Before joining forces with Bizarrap, Shakira collaborated with other reggaetoneros including Calle 13 rappers Residente, Ozuna and Rauw Alejandro. “Chantaje,” her 2016 duet with Maluma, is one of her most popular songs on YouTube, second only to “Waka Waka (“This Time For Africa”),” which served as the official World Cup song in 2010 (“Hips Don”) t Lie,” the Wyclef Jean duet that scored Shakira’s first Billboard Hot 100 hit, is her third most viewed video on the platform. When she and J. Lo co-headlined the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show, Bad Bunny and J Balvin joined the pop stars for part of their set.
This year’s VMA broadcast marks a turning point for Shakira. She is the first South American artist to receive the Video Vanguard Award, a milestone that comes as the VMAs – simulcast on Univision – will be more global than ever. Brazilian singer Anitta and Karol G, the fellow Colombian singer who teamed up with Shakira for the post-breakup power anthem “TQG,” are scheduled to perform – as is Best New Artist nominee Peso Pluma, whose collaboration between Regional Mexican and reggaeton brought him growing international fame.
“I could consider myself a debris from the Latin explosion,” Shakira told Billboard in 2018, adding, “It’s hard to generalize, but music has gotten to the point where it’s increasingly having a more sophisticated sound that’s for you “Many Latin American artists understand this universality well and know how to appeal to global tastes.”
The Bzrp collaboration, which kicked off Shakira’s big year, broke a number of records – including the best debut for a Spanish-language song on Spotify and the fastest Latin track to reach 100 million views on YouTube. Shakira also became the first woman to land in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 with a Spanish-language song.
Shakira references her extensive music catalog in the song, bellowing in a callback “una loba como yo no está pa’ tipos como tu” – “A she-wolf like me is not for guys like you” – the lead single from her album of the same name from 2009.
“Las mujeres ya no lloran / las mujeres facturan,” Shakira adds over an electro-pop beat, offering advice she seems to have followed herself. Essentially: women don’t cry anymore/they cash in!
