Shakira released her latest studio album in November 2009. We downloaded it (legally), burned it to CD, and listened to it while driving to our relatives’ house for Thanksgiving. I’ve been listening to Shakira for over 10 years now ever since I saw the video for her song “Inevitable” on one of the Spanish language channels. I think it was Univision. I got the album “Donde Esta Las Ladrones” that includes that song and is full of cerebral melodic songs along with soulful love songs all in Spanish. They now seem like classics: the emotional and celebratory “Inevitable”, the soulful “Tu”, the political “Octavio Dia” and “No Creo”, the fun-sounding but still serious “Ciego Sordamundo” (Blind deaf-mute) and the title track, the quiet “Moscas en la Casa”, and the loud raucous “Ojos Asi” with its Middle Eastern rhythms. I soon learned that Shakira is from Colombia like Juanes. She’s from the town of Barranquilla and had been famous in Latin America since the mid 1990’s. When I first moved it L.A., I would listen to Spanish radio stations and watch the Spanish channels to keep up with the Spanish I had learned in college. I heard many of Shakira’s songs both from listening to 107.5 KLVE FM and watching Univision and Telemundo.
I soon acquired her first major CD: “Pies Discalzos” that was originally released in 1995 when she was 17 or 18. She had actually released two CD prior to that one: “Magia” in 1990 and “Peligro” in 1993, but these are hard to find. “Pies Discalzos” consists primary of love songs but some still rock such as “Donde Esta Corazon.” “Estoy Aqui” was one I heard frequently on KLVE. She won two or three Latin Grammys at the inaugural awards show in September 2000 and did an impressive performance of “Ojos Asi” on the show. She still was not very well known among English-speaking Americans until November 2001 when she released “Laundry Service”, her first English language album. Its songs were also catchy with intelligent lyrics. There was at least one song just in Spanish on the CD, “Te Dejo Madrid” and two songs with both Spanish and English versions: “Where ever Whenever” (“Suerte”) and “Objection Tango”. There was also an English version of “Ojos Asi” (“Eyes Like Yours”).
In the fall of 2002 we saw Shakira perform live at Staples Center for the L.A. leg of her “Tour of the Mongoose”. I joined one of her fan clubs so I could get tickets before the regular ones went on sale. I got seats in the front row of the top level and also got commemorative tickets with prints of paintings done by Shakira herself. The concert was impressive with major production. She did many songs from her earlier Spanish language albums. The crowd was mostly young Latinas. She did a couple of English language covers: Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like a Lady” and AC/DC’s “Back in Black”. There was one point where she was supposed to play drums but that didn’t work out and she said that she “owed us one.” She had several costume changes and had the audience sing along with “Estoy Aqui”. The concert ended after a first or second encore with an extended, production-heavy version of “Where ever Whenever” where she was brought out on a moving platform from above the stage and cannons shot out lots of confetti into the crowd on the floor. When she finished she disappeared through a trap door in the stage floor.
A week or two later we were at the deli Dan’s Subs in Woodland Hills. We overheard the deli’s manager, who was older than us, talking with another employee about being at the Shakira concert. So she doesn’t just appeal to young Latinas and people like us. I later read that Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez (known as “Gabo”) is a fan.
In 2005 Shakira released two new albums: the Spanish language “Fijacion Oral Volume I” and the English language “Oral Fixation Volume II”. The former included the loud, rhythmic Reggaeton (labeled as Shaketon) song “La Tortura” featuring Alejandro Sanz. The latter included the song “Don’t Bother”. It didn’t do as well as expected so later they released a version with the song “Hips Don’t Lie” with Wyclef Jean. This was a bit of a shallow departure from her more cerebral themes and I’m glad I got the original album before it was re-released. Shakira recorded a duet with Beyonce, “Beautiful Liar” and in January 2009 performed at President Barak Obama’s inauguration with Usher and Stevie Wonder.
After “Hips Don’t Lie” I wasn’t sure what to expect of the next album to be released in late 2009. The first single, “She Wolf” was in a similar vein, though it had a brash silliness to it. Shakira had said she wanted her album to cheer people up during the recession. The album consists of 13 tracks, a few of which may be bonus tracks and three of them are Spanish versions of English tracks.
The album begins with the title track, the electronic, quick-rhythm “She Wolf”. It gets a bit silly with Shakira howling during the chorus. Not her best, but interesting. I saw the video online and it gets fairly suggestive. The next song “I Did it Again” is a duet with rapper Kid Cudi. It has some verbal not-too-fast verses. For the chorus there’s a bit of a tribute to Michael Jackson with Shakira singing “Annie” and Kid Cudi singing “are you OK” or something like that. The song seems to be about making a mistake: going with the wrong guy, so it’s not the same as “Oops, I did it again”, though it has the shallowness. Kid Cudi has an extended rap towards the end where he mentions how Shakira said, “your hips don’t lie”, a reference to her earlier song. The next song starts with a rhythmic percussive beat. “Long Time” has the same level of shallowness as the preceding songs, or maybe it’s just silly. How many other songs have the lyric “You got me thinking outside the box”?
The next song, “Why Wait”, has a similar rhythmic beat that almost sounds Middle Eastern. It follows the common theme of the other songs and I found it more enjoyable when I didn’t listen to the lyrics. The theme of the next song, “Good Stuff”, is nearly identical but the rhythm is faster and more electronic than percussion based. It includes the silly-sounding “The grass is much greener with us on it.” The theme finally gets more interesting with the next track, “The Men in this Town”. It’s about L.A. and movie stars and starts by singing “Matt Damon’s not meant for me” in the first verse. It goes on to mention the Skybar to the Standard (Hotel in Downtown L.A.). It’s a fun party song with enough character to overcome its shallowness and it ends with some high singing. I also like the next song, “Gypsy”, a slower song with acoustic (banjo?) and string accompaniment. It’s about the gypsy life (“I might steal your cloths and wear them if they fit me.”) It has the requisite silliness, a fun little song.
It back to shallowness with the next song, “Spy”, another collaboration with Wyclef Jean, this time celebrating an obsessive, overprotective boyfriend. But it sounds fun and has some interesting “skat” like singing by Shakira. The next song, “Mon Amour”, is a bit more interesting since it’s sung by a woman whose heart has been broken (“I hope you have a horrible vacation.”) It’s a fast song heavy on guitar and pathos. The end gets a little silly, though. The next three songs are Spanish versions of the songs “She Wolf” (“Loba”), “I Did it Again” (“Lo Hecho este Hecho”) without Kid Cudi, and “Why Wait” (“Anos Luz”). I think the songs sound better in Spanish. The lyrics just sound better and somehow the songs don’t seem as shallow, unlike the last song, “Give it Up to Me”, a bonus track in English featuring Little Wayne. The song is rhythmic and catchy but the subject matter about being submissive may not be the best message. The song is popular, though. I heard it playing on KISS FM at Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant on January 11, 2010.
Like the song, I can’t say that the album “She Wolf” is Shakira’s best effort. It has some interesting songs and the music is good, often overshadowing the lyrics. It’s always nice when a place in my old neighborhood, the Standard in Downtown L.A. in this case, gets mentioned in a song. But overall Shakira has continued the successful “Hips Don’t Lie” formula and made an entire album out of it. I guess there’s a fan base for that, but I found it a bit lacking. It makes me want to listen to a better album such as “Donde Estan Las Ladrones”. Shakira has come a long way since singing about “John Paul Satre” and “Carlos Marx”. I’m just not sure it’s the best way.
I soon acquired her first major CD: “Pies Discalzos” that was originally released in 1995 when she was 17 or 18. She had actually released two CD prior to that one: “Magia” in 1990 and “Peligro” in 1993, but these are hard to find. “Pies Discalzos” consists primary of love songs but some still rock such as “Donde Esta Corazon.” “Estoy Aqui” was one I heard frequently on KLVE. She won two or three Latin Grammys at the inaugural awards show in September 2000 and did an impressive performance of “Ojos Asi” on the show. She still was not very well known among English-speaking Americans until November 2001 when she released “Laundry Service”, her first English language album. Its songs were also catchy with intelligent lyrics. There was at least one song just in Spanish on the CD, “Te Dejo Madrid” and two songs with both Spanish and English versions: “Where ever Whenever” (“Suerte”) and “Objection Tango”. There was also an English version of “Ojos Asi” (“Eyes Like Yours”).
In the fall of 2002 we saw Shakira perform live at Staples Center for the L.A. leg of her “Tour of the Mongoose”. I joined one of her fan clubs so I could get tickets before the regular ones went on sale. I got seats in the front row of the top level and also got commemorative tickets with prints of paintings done by Shakira herself. The concert was impressive with major production. She did many songs from her earlier Spanish language albums. The crowd was mostly young Latinas. She did a couple of English language covers: Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like a Lady” and AC/DC’s “Back in Black”. There was one point where she was supposed to play drums but that didn’t work out and she said that she “owed us one.” She had several costume changes and had the audience sing along with “Estoy Aqui”. The concert ended after a first or second encore with an extended, production-heavy version of “Where ever Whenever” where she was brought out on a moving platform from above the stage and cannons shot out lots of confetti into the crowd on the floor. When she finished she disappeared through a trap door in the stage floor.
A week or two later we were at the deli Dan’s Subs in Woodland Hills. We overheard the deli’s manager, who was older than us, talking with another employee about being at the Shakira concert. So she doesn’t just appeal to young Latinas and people like us. I later read that Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez (known as “Gabo”) is a fan.
In 2005 Shakira released two new albums: the Spanish language “Fijacion Oral Volume I” and the English language “Oral Fixation Volume II”. The former included the loud, rhythmic Reggaeton (labeled as Shaketon) song “La Tortura” featuring Alejandro Sanz. The latter included the song “Don’t Bother”. It didn’t do as well as expected so later they released a version with the song “Hips Don’t Lie” with Wyclef Jean. This was a bit of a shallow departure from her more cerebral themes and I’m glad I got the original album before it was re-released. Shakira recorded a duet with Beyonce, “Beautiful Liar” and in January 2009 performed at President Barak Obama’s inauguration with Usher and Stevie Wonder.
After “Hips Don’t Lie” I wasn’t sure what to expect of the next album to be released in late 2009. The first single, “She Wolf” was in a similar vein, though it had a brash silliness to it. Shakira had said she wanted her album to cheer people up during the recession. The album consists of 13 tracks, a few of which may be bonus tracks and three of them are Spanish versions of English tracks.
The album begins with the title track, the electronic, quick-rhythm “She Wolf”. It gets a bit silly with Shakira howling during the chorus. Not her best, but interesting. I saw the video online and it gets fairly suggestive. The next song “I Did it Again” is a duet with rapper Kid Cudi. It has some verbal not-too-fast verses. For the chorus there’s a bit of a tribute to Michael Jackson with Shakira singing “Annie” and Kid Cudi singing “are you OK” or something like that. The song seems to be about making a mistake: going with the wrong guy, so it’s not the same as “Oops, I did it again”, though it has the shallowness. Kid Cudi has an extended rap towards the end where he mentions how Shakira said, “your hips don’t lie”, a reference to her earlier song. The next song starts with a rhythmic percussive beat. “Long Time” has the same level of shallowness as the preceding songs, or maybe it’s just silly. How many other songs have the lyric “You got me thinking outside the box”?
The next song, “Why Wait”, has a similar rhythmic beat that almost sounds Middle Eastern. It follows the common theme of the other songs and I found it more enjoyable when I didn’t listen to the lyrics. The theme of the next song, “Good Stuff”, is nearly identical but the rhythm is faster and more electronic than percussion based. It includes the silly-sounding “The grass is much greener with us on it.” The theme finally gets more interesting with the next track, “The Men in this Town”. It’s about L.A. and movie stars and starts by singing “Matt Damon’s not meant for me” in the first verse. It goes on to mention the Skybar to the Standard (Hotel in Downtown L.A.). It’s a fun party song with enough character to overcome its shallowness and it ends with some high singing. I also like the next song, “Gypsy”, a slower song with acoustic (banjo?) and string accompaniment. It’s about the gypsy life (“I might steal your cloths and wear them if they fit me.”) It has the requisite silliness, a fun little song.
It back to shallowness with the next song, “Spy”, another collaboration with Wyclef Jean, this time celebrating an obsessive, overprotective boyfriend. But it sounds fun and has some interesting “skat” like singing by Shakira. The next song, “Mon Amour”, is a bit more interesting since it’s sung by a woman whose heart has been broken (“I hope you have a horrible vacation.”) It’s a fast song heavy on guitar and pathos. The end gets a little silly, though. The next three songs are Spanish versions of the songs “She Wolf” (“Loba”), “I Did it Again” (“Lo Hecho este Hecho”) without Kid Cudi, and “Why Wait” (“Anos Luz”). I think the songs sound better in Spanish. The lyrics just sound better and somehow the songs don’t seem as shallow, unlike the last song, “Give it Up to Me”, a bonus track in English featuring Little Wayne. The song is rhythmic and catchy but the subject matter about being submissive may not be the best message. The song is popular, though. I heard it playing on KISS FM at Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant on January 11, 2010.
Like the song, I can’t say that the album “She Wolf” is Shakira’s best effort. It has some interesting songs and the music is good, often overshadowing the lyrics. It’s always nice when a place in my old neighborhood, the Standard in Downtown L.A. in this case, gets mentioned in a song. But overall Shakira has continued the successful “Hips Don’t Lie” formula and made an entire album out of it. I guess there’s a fan base for that, but I found it a bit lacking. It makes me want to listen to a better album such as “Donde Estan Las Ladrones”. Shakira has come a long way since singing about “John Paul Satre” and “Carlos Marx”. I’m just not sure it’s the best way.
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