The cowl of Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran encompasses a closeup shot of Shakira crying, her tears turning into diamonds as they run down her face. It’s a neat summation of comparatively latest developments within the singer’s profession. Her 2023 single Bzrp Music Classes, Vol 53 reworked the poisonous fallout from her breakup with footballer Gerard Piqué into one in every of her greatest ever hits. Inside days of launch, it was essentially the most streamed observe on the earth and had damaged the file for the variety of YouTube views for a Latin American track. It was so enormous, it apparently affected the inventory market. “You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo,” she railed, “you traded a Rolex for a Casio” – and, extremely, each Renault and Casio’s share costs dropped.
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Furthermore, the duvet means that there’s extra the place that got here from, that Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran is Shakira’s large breakup album – her Blood on the Tracks, her Right here, My Pricey – a improvement which may trigger long-term observers of her profession to prick up their ears. Her arrival on the worldwide stage with 2001’s Laundry Service was one in every of 00s pop’s extra cheering occasions. Right here was a 24-year-old Colombian who appeared to have a unique method to being a pop star. She proffered mainstream bangers and AOR ballads alongside musical experiments off-the-wall sufficient to make you surprise how they’d bought previous reception at a serious file label: Gregorian chants, surf guitars, bursts of music corridor oompah and homages to Led Zeppelin. Her lyrics have been so odd that some observers patronisingly instructed their creator had a shaky grasp of English, however a fast scan of their Spanish-language equivalents revealed she was utilizing precisely the identical bizarre metaphors and imagery in her native tongue. It was all massively entertaining, till the industrial underperformance of 2009’s She Wolf within the US appeared to rattle her: Shakira’s albums have been getting much less idiosyncratic and extra dreary ever since. Maybe the hell-hath-no-fury temper right here would possibly encourage her to get better her sense of daring: in spite of everything, a girl who expresses her emotions about her ex’s mom by allegedly placing a lifesize mannequin of a witch instantly outdoors her dwelling doesn’t appear minded to meekly curry favour.
Alas, anybody harbouring such expectations ought to dampen them. It’s definitely an album mired in her romantic travails, from sorrow at a failing relationship (Entre Paréntesis) to brutal enumeration of her ex’s failings (Te Felicito), to tentative steps again into relationship, beset by doubts and fears which appear to have been assuaged by the conclusion of Nassau (“After doing it nonstop / We repeat it”). There are occasional glints of the blue-sky-thinking Shakira of yore, within the lyrics of Puntería (which, if the interpretation supplied by the file firm is to be trusted, accommodates the intriguing command “give me your hearth, squeeze my buttocks”) and within the second when Cómo Dónde y Cuándo briefly threatens to rework itself from a We Will Rock You stomp into raging drum’n’bass. However these are scattered moments in an album primarily involved with strolling by a number of acquainted trendy pop types: some Afrobeats, an enormous piano ballad (full with visitor vocals by Shakira’s kids), a little bit of mournful reggaeton on TQG and loads of wan pop-house of each the EDM-inspired and disco-influenced varieties. The melodies vary from robust to irritatingly rinky-dink: none of them has a tune grabby sufficient to override the sense that you just’ve heard a whole lot of this type of factor already. There’s a visitor look from Cardi B – who briefly livens issues up by evaluating her vagina to an empanada – and there’s the perennially miserable sound of a vocalist who patently doesn’t must be Auto-Tuned submitting to it anyway as a result of that’s the best way issues are carried out nowadays.
The perfect moments come when Shakira seeks out bands who deal in regional Mexican types, a sound at present on the ascent within the Americas: Grupo Frontera on Entre Parentésis, and particularly Fuerza Regida, who carry out a frantic corrido on nearer El Jefe. The latter jolts you not simply due to its sweary lyrics – “I work tougher than a whore however I fuck like a priest” – however as a result of it feels surprising. This isn’t music that Shakira has essayed earlier than, which suggests the adventurous spirit that was as soon as her USP isn’t fully extinguished.
But when she’s nonetheless able to making placing music, why doesn’t she do it extra usually? The vast majority of Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran settles for gliding in a single ear and out the opposite with out leaving a lot impression, however with out actively driving you up the wall both: the state of chic mediocrity by which a whole lot of present pop chooses to function. Maybe that’s the purpose right here. Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran sounds just like the work of somebody who has determined that gross sales are born of enjoying it protected and that success in itself is the most effective revenge.
This week Alexis listened to
Charlotte Day Wilson – I Don’t Love You
An beautiful, swish piano ballad with a plethora of twisted vocal samples lurking in its peripheral imaginative and prescient: followers of James Blake’s early experimentation are suggested to research.
