Shakira offers new take on life and love
Colombian singing star Shakira, now 28, says she approaches life -- and romance -- in a more grown-up manner.
BY JORDAN LEVIN
Shakira's new album is called Oral fijación volumen 1 (Oral Fixation Volume 1), but it's far more obsessed with love than with anything Freudian. But this is no exuberant teenage celebration or swooning ode to romance. This is love in all its grown-up complexity: ecstasy, jealousy, bemusement, regret, pain, acceptance. Which comes as something of a surprise from the woman whose sumptuous mid-section and lush looks made her a symbol of pop sensuality.
''I think I've finally arrived at my adult life,'' said the 28-year-old Colombian star from Madrid last week. And with that has come an ability to see more deeply into a situation.
''There's always a positive side to things and a negative side,'' Shakira says. ``I'm running out of opinions, for example. I used to have so many -- and each one of those opinions seemed completely inflexible, like they were always going to be the same. And they changed, as all of us do. You start being more tolerant about life, and you start seeing other perspectives. That also comes with fears about life and death and all of that. As you climb to the first floor, things get complicated. Your priorities change.''
After the enormous success of 2002's multiplatinum Laundry Service , which established Shakira as one of Latin music's biggest -- and biggest crossover -- stars, you might expect a little more rock-goddess attitude. Instead, Shakira's confidence shows in the way she's burrowed inside for inspiration during the year and a half she took to write and produce Fijación , which will be in stores Tuesday. She wrote 60 songs in Spanish and English; an entirely different English-language album, Oral Fixation 2 , comes out this fall.
La tortura (The Torture), a duet with Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz that topped Billboard's Latin radio chart this week, is a wry, bitter back and forth about infidelity and trust that's both funny and deeply painful. ''Losing you has been torture -- today I know my heart is yours,'' Sanz sings, and Shakira shoots back ``take that bone to some other dog -- I can't ask the eternal of a mere mortal.''
''The lyrics came to me like that, a dialogue between a man and a woman about unfaithfulness and forgiveness and doubt and love and hate and all of those deep emotions in a relationship,'' Shakira says. ``There's always a humorous aspect to everything tragic, and I think when someone gets betrayed in a relationship you have to find some humor in it.''
In No , she acknowledges what a lover has brought to her life even as she orders him out of it. ``One can't live with so much venom. The hope your love gave me, no one else has given me.''
''Every one of us always holds something against someone and ultimately it's really harmful,'' Shakira says. ``[ No ] came out of that thought, which was accompanying me for a while.''
It all sounds like it comes from Shakira's own experience, but she is vague about her relationship with Antonio de la Rua, the son of Argentina's controversial ex-president Fernando de la Rua. They're still together after five years, although he is based in New York and she now spends most of her time in the Bahamas, where Oral fijación was produced in her home studio. ''We see each other whenever we can. We're very committed,'' she says.
Although the album cover shows her holding a naked infant, Shakira says it'll be a while before she cradles a baby of her own, although she says it's definitely in her plans. ''I think it's the biggest project of my life,'' she says. ``I just have to do a couple more things before I become a committed mother.''
Shakira produced Fijación , and her confidence is also apparent in its musical mix, which ranges from the reggaeton-cumbia groove of La tortura , to electro-jazz-bossa nova in Para obtener un ``si'' (To Get a ``Yes''), to echoes of '80s bands like the Eurythmics and the B-52's. Gustavo Cerati, leader of legendary Argentine group Soda Stereo, the inspiration for countless Latin rock bands, steps in to play lush, authoritative guitar on No and Día especial (Special Day).
''I like to count on the freedom of experimenting and going in any direction I want,'' Shakira says. 'I don't believe in sonic unity, conceptual unity for an album. I think you just have to let an album be. Every song asks you for something. As a producer I just had to hear those requests and obey. `Shakira, give me a synthesizer! Now!' ''
``It's my most mature album in terms of production -- at times it was overwhelming. I wanted to make sure that the final result is what I want. And that has a price. But the reward is that you get what you want.''
She says the English recording is equally eclectic, although it's concerned more with social issues than romantic ones. ''I get lost in my own thoughts and confusions and fantasies about love, and the Spanish songs came to me like that,'' Shakira says. ``I don't know why, because none of the songs were premeditated. I was just there to receive them.''
