When Shakira shimmied her way onto the U.S. music charts in 2001, the English-speaking world had no idea she was already a decade into a caliente career. The Y2K generation was still "Livin' la Vida Loca" and shaking their bon-bon with Ricky Martin, another Latin superstar who was lightyears ahead of the label-orchestrated boy bands and bubblegum pop singers in terms of stage time and experience. And while the American audience has long loved Spanish-influenced and -inflected music, Latin artists haven't been able to achieve mainstream success while singing in their native tongue until, well, this decade.
That's part of what makes Shakira's twelfth studio album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, so remarkable. It's less a return-to-her-roots -- the Colombian chanteuse has released other fully Spanish-language albums since 2001's four-times-platinum Laundry Service introduced her to Top 40 airwaves -- than it is a complete, Phoenix-esque rebirth of self. And on top of that, it's one that the non-fluent set can understand and champion, in much the way they did for Luis Fonsi's 2019 megahit "Despacito" and anything Bad Bunny touches.
"While writing each song I was rebuilding myself," Shakira said in an Instagram announcement last month. "While singing them, my tears transformed into diamonds, and my vulnerability into strength."
In other words, there's nothing quite like an artist's first album post-breakup, and that's especially true coming from a grown woman who knows her worth.
To say the past two years have been tough for Shakira would be an understatement. Forget the international tax courts and her beloved father's failing health -- in June 2022, she announced her split from her partner of 11 years, former Catalan soccer player Gerard Piqué. There were rumors of infidelity on his part, but at the time Shakira kept her thoughts to herself, partially in an effort to protect the two young children they share, and partially, it appears, to use her music as an emotional exorcism.
Las Mujeres asserts her mastery of all manner of Latin musical styles, from Afrobeats ("Nassau"), to bachata ("Monotonia," with Puerto Rican singer Ozuna), to Tejano ("(Entre Paréntesis)," with Texan regional Mexican band Grupo Frontera), to the electronic hits that club kids will be hitting the dance floor for ("Punteria," with Bronx-bred Caribbean queen Cardi B).
And even though seven of the 15 tracks have slowly trickled out since late 2022, including the reggaeton diss-track "TQG," which she and fellow Colombian Karol G already won a Latin Grammy for, and the raw naming-names kiss-off track "Bzrp: Music Sessions, Vol. 53" with Argentinian DJ Bizarrap, which not only won last year's Latin Grammy for Song of the Year but also broke numerous streaming and viewership records, Las Mujeres as a whole stands up to other heartbreak masterworks like Beyonce's Lemonade or Adele's 21.
Take, for example, the anguish of "última," which will stop you in your tracks the same way Adele's "Someone Like You" did in 2011. Even a non-Spanish speaker can feel the devastation as she sings, "We lost our love halfway / How come you got tired of something so genuine?" over a spare piano accompaniment. It's no wonder the head of her label's marketing department cried upon hearing it!
"The dissolution of a family -- that is probably one of the most painful things a human can experience," Shakira told The New York Times, and it's a pain that transcends language barriers. Another piano ballad, "Acróstico -- Milan y Sasha," is a heartfelt lullaby to her children, which is something any newly single parent would want to impart on their own littles: "You taught me that love is not a scam, and that when it's real it doesn't end / I tried to stop you from seeing me cry, that you didn't see my fragility ... Never doubt that I will be here / Talk to me and I'll listen to you."
It's an album Shakira clearly poured everything into, and it checks off all of the clinical stages of grief: denial, anger, barginning, depression, acceptance. She has come out the other side triumphant, hence the album's title.
"With every song that I wrote, I was rebuilding myself," she explained to the Times. "It was like putting my bones back together. That's why I decided to go for this title, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran -- 'Women No Longer Cry.' Crying itself will always be a mechanism of survival for human beings. It's an important part of living. And I feel like women today, we don't need to be told how we're supposed to heal, how we're supposed to lick our wounds. We are the ones who have to move on and preserve our species, preserve the survival of our offspring -- of the she-wolves that we are."
Whenever, wherever, and in whatever language an audience listens to this album in, they'll know exactly what Shakira is saying. Some art just transcends ... and that's the deal my dear.
