Since 2022, Shakira’s private life has publicly unfolded like an engrossing telenovela that simply gained’t resolve. The saga started in June of that 12 months, when the Grammy-winning Colombian famous person introduced the tip of her 11-year romance with the Catalan soccer participant, and father of her two youngsters, Gerard Piqué. Regardless of taking a civil tone in a press launch issued that summer season, she got here firing again in 2023 with a tabloid-ready diss monitor, detailing their breakup (and Piqué’s infidelity) in excruciating element: the electro-pop atomic bomb “BZRP Music Periods #53,”recorded with the stellar Argentine producer Bizarrap.
This monitor seems on Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, Shakira’s remaining kiss goodbye to the chapter of her life. Translated to “Ladies No Longer Cry,” it’s the singer-songwriter’s first studio album for the reason that launch of her 2017 LP, El Dorado — and a fierce, unfiltered bounce again from years spent inundated by writers’ block and heartache. “Whereas writing every tune I used to be rebuilding myself,” Shakira stated in a press assertion. “Whereas singing them, my tears remodeled into diamonds, and my vulnerability into power.”
Since Shakira dropped pop-reggaetón gold in El Dorado, music from Latin America has scaled industrial heights as soon as considered unfathomable in america. Within the subsequent years of reggaetón’s peak world prominence, Colombia alone has produced many acts which have upended the anglophone supremacy in pop music, together with J Balvin, Maluma and Karol G. Puerto Rican lure maestro Dangerous Bunny outran all of them — then helped clear the way in which for his collaborators, Mexican acts like Natanael Cano and Grupo Frontera, to take their rightful place on the world stage.
One may suppose that this crowded Latin music panorama may threaten Shakira’s relevance. However in 2020, at her historic Tremendous Bowl halftime present with J.Lo, she rolled out all of the stops: she stirred her hips, banged the drums, and cranked out the opening riffs of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” on guitar. (Simply in case you forgot she may play the axe.) Then, upon profitable her MTV Vanguard Award in 2023, she belly-danced whereas brandishing knives, and obtained Taylor Swift headbanging within the crowd.
Let Las Mujeres be her testomony: Shakira taught Latin music’s new wave every thing they should find out about sustaining star energy. And simply as Gloria and Emilio Estefán welcomed Shakira into their Miami residence to assist stroll her via crossover success — first along with her 1998 rock album Dónde Están Los Ladrones?, then along with her first English-language document, 2001’s Laundry Service — Shakira makes use of Las Mujeres to share her large highlight with a various slate of artists, songwriters and producers who studied from her playbook.
Opening with an help from her longtime fan, Grammy-winning rapper Cardi B — “I don’t care if she desires me to meow, I’ll do it,” said the Bronx MC in an interview — Shakira will get straight to the purpose with the nu-disco radio sweet of “Puntería.” She serenades a dastardly Cupid in Spanish, rueing the wreckage he’s triggered in her life: “Tu tiene buena puntería,” or “You could have nice goal.”
Shakira additionally faucets the nicely of Latin songwriters and producers who’ve risen together with their collaborators. Tainy and Albert Hype, producers for Dangerous Bunny, lend a haunted tropical really feel on “Nassau” and “Tiempo Sin Verte.” Mr. Naisgai, right-hand man to Puerto Rican house balladeer Rauw Alejandro, offers “Cohete” a crystalline dance-pop luster. Earlier than Shakira labored with ASCAP-winning songwriter Keityn, he wrote “Tusa” for Karol G.
Bizarrap, who blended Shakira’s dance tracks “Vol. 53” and “La Fuerte,” formulated his personal EDM fusion style along with his BZRP Music Periods YouTube collection, wherein pop stars and rappers get to reside out their Ibiza fantasies in his studio. With such a potent arsenal of Latin abilities on Las Mujeres, DJ Tïesto’s huge room remix of Bizarrap’s masterpiece feels not like a grand finale, however a visit down reminiscence lane.
The moody rockera of Shakira’s Nineties resurface for a spell in her free-spirited guitar ballad, “Cómo, Dónde y Cuándo.” She sighs angstily in Spanish, “There’s as a lot mendacity within the cities/As there may be trash within the seas/Nobody sincere is left/Solely drunkards within the bars” — giving the alt ladies only one repair of the devastating verses and thorny riffs we got here to like in basic songs like “Inevitable.”
Shakira dusts off her cowboy boots on not one, however two música mexicana collaborations; her first since her dalliance with mariachi on 1998’s “Ciega, Sordomuda.” She will get weak with the Texan gamers Grupo Frontera on “(Entre Parentesís),” a dejection cumbia that calls to thoughts her love-triangle-themed 2001 monitor “Objection (Tango).” She will get even on “El Jefe,” a hot-footed corrido with Fuerza Regida; informed from the attitude of Shakira’s nanny Liliana Melgar, who Piqué allegedly fired with out severance; the tune attracts consideration to the plight of home staff and the individuals who exploit them. “You could have every thing to be a millionaire/Costly tastes/The mindset,” quips the She Wolf in Spanish, her claws totally out. “You simply lack the wage.”
Out of the 15 tracks, seven have already been launched since 2022, limiting the variety of surprises and headline-grabbing moments with the document’s launch. For instance, “TQG” — the venomous duet Shakira recorded with pop-reggaetón idol Karol G — already appeared on the junior singer’s hit document Mañana Será Bonito, and gained the pair of Parceras a Latin Grammy for finest city fusion/efficiency in 2023. However stocking the album with confirmed tracks does beat pulling low cost gimmicks for virality, like one other barely-Spanglish single with a problematic American, or ready till 2025 to serve us a microwaved, 20-year anniversary remix of “Hips Don’t Lie.”
Las Mujeres is a grab-bag of pop style fusions, but Shakira manages to carry courtroom in each tune along with her incisive and enduring songcraft. She may have simply gone the remainder of her life with out releasing one other album, as a substitute flexing her ubiquity in single after single for eternity. However an artist with a legacy like Shakira’s, on par with anglophone pop titans Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, ought to get to outline her personal eras accordingly.
In Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, Shakira lastly will get to show the web page on these tempestuous previous two years, and reintroduce herself–not as Shakira the soccer mother, nor Shakira the heartbroken–however Shakira fucking Mebarak, worldwide pop icon and undefeated champ.
