Streaming and AI might but destroy music for ever – don’t be unhappy, we had a superb run – however one of many sweeter morbid signs of this period is the revealed recognition of non-anglophone music. In 2023, Shakira cut up messily from her long-term associate, Gerard Piqué, and was fined greater than £6m for tax fraud. But streaming returned her to the US Prime 10 for the primary time since 2007 with the Spanish-language songs TQG (with Karol G) and Bzrp Music Periods Vol 53 (with Bizarrap), hilarious, middle-finger-aloft disquisitions into her ex’s faithlessness (“You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo!”). Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (Girls No Longer Cry) is her twelfth studio album.
Vocally, the “queen of Latin music” isn’t notably distinctive, however she ranges from seductive to strident in a single line and makes each equally interesting. Her Majesty’s moods are despondent (uncommon), thirsty (a lot much less uncommon) or proudly highly effective (almost all the time) and she or he ensures you’re buffeted by each emotion billowing previous. Última is a piano ballad on the sting of melodrama, although Shakira turns off the dry ice, dials down her wind machine and provides us one thing small, intimate and actual. Puntería can be nice, a breezy hookup-catching-feelings monitor, whereas Te Felicito is one in all a number of modern dance-pop gems.
