By: Dalia Perez
The Columbian singer-songwriter Shakira debuted her first album in 1990, at the young age of thirteen. Over the years she has experimented with a variety of rhythms and genres influenced by her Arabic and Latin background. Shakira has also stated that she was heavily influenced by the music she listened to growing up. In my critical review, I will argue that Shakira’s latest album El Dorado, fuses a variety of rhythms and genres influenced by her cultural backgrounds and musical interests to express her personal experiences to her audience as well as redefining sexual norms in the track “Chantaje”.
Shakira has been known to fuse together a variety of rhythms throughout her musical career to shake up the pop industry since she is labeled as primarily a pop artist. The track “What We Said” featuring MAGIC! has a mixture of the Jamaican and Latin-influenced rhythm dem-bow and a bit of African guitar. This proves the point Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman made in the book American Popular Music that “musicians in Latin America developed a wide range of styles blending African music with the traditions of Europe. Caribbean, South American, and Mexican traditions have long influenced popular music” (Starr & Waterman, 10). Aside from “What We Said,” the track “Perro Fiel” also has the dem-bow rhythm with Latin pop. She also fuses the rhythms of R&B with Latin pop in the track “Trap”.
Shakira’s personal experiences with her partner Gerard Pique played as her main inspiration for this album. Pique encouraged Shakira to continue making music and to hold off retirement stating it was not her time to retire because she still has a lot to say. Piques support of Shakira’s career reminded me of Jennifer Lena’s article Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music in which she states, “In music scenes, the sources of practical support are the most diverse of across all genre forms: artists often rely on family members, friends, and non-musical employment to support their creative labor” (Lena, 2012). Shakira heavily relies on her personal experiences in life to influence her lyrics in her music. The track “Coconut Tree” is an example of this in which she describes a trip she took with Pique to a private island away from the public eye and she described the feeling of where she first fell in love with him. Another example is the track “Me Enamore” which is a song Shakira wrote about falling in love with her partner Pique. She describes that her life completely changed after she first met him and mentions they fell in love with each other and had a family. The track “Nada” is also about her partner Pique, but this song brings me back to the old Shakira the rocker with the red long hair. In this track, Shakira dives back into the genre of rock n roll to express how everything in her life means nothing to her including the money and fame if Pique is not by her side. “Nada” brings Shakira back to her roots to when she stated in the music industry with her earliest albums being heavily influenced by the music she listened to growing up referring to rock in which she stated Led Zeppelin as one of her favorite rock bands.
In this album, Shakira also redefines sexual norms in her song “Chantaje” expressing women as being dominant and in control of their sexuality. This song is a collaboration featuring Maluma a Latin pop heartthrob in which he describes Shakira as being a tease and being mean because she goes around teasing him by the way she goes on about her life and the way she moves her body in a sensual way. Shakira responds by saying that she is free to do what she wants and go out at night and that she is the one that carries the pants in the relationship. She also makes it clear that she does not belong to him or anyone else. Throughout the music video, Shakira is shown wearing a variety of risqué outfits and dancing in a sensual matter. This proves the statement Anna Powers made in her article A Spy in the House of Love that “women also seem more willing than ever to participate in their own objectification” (Powers, 43) which is clearly seen in the music video for “Chantaje”. Though it is also important to note that there is a difference in “self-abuse” and in “self-celebration” and Shakira is all about “self-celebration” which is proven with her “Chantaje” by expressing that women are free to do what when they want to and should not be confined to sexual norms about women.
Shakira’s latest album truly showed her audience what holds importance in her life and has opened her personal life to her audience by sharing personal experiences about her love life. She also experiments with a variety of musical genres composed of a variety of rhythms influenced by her musical interests as well as her Latin and Arabic cultural backgrounds to shake up popular music. Lastly, Shakira has also redefined sexual norms by expressing that women are free to do what they want by continuing to participate in her own objection as a form of “self-celebration” throughout a variety of her lyrics and music videos.
Critical Models:
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21867-lemonade/
https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/ariana-grande-thank-u-next-album-review.html
Works Cited:
Ann Powers, “A Spy in the House of Love,” Women & Music, Volume 12, 2008 (PDF)
Jennifer Lena, “Music Genres,” Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music (Princeton Univ. Press, 2012) (PDF)
Starr and Waterman, “Introduction” and “Streams of Tradition: The Sources of Popular Music,” American Popular Music (2008) online access at UW Libraries http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/gpo1267/american-popular-music.pdf (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
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