Pod Insights 60 Songs That Explain the '90s Shakira — “Hips Don’t Lie” About this episode This episode is for the ladies up in here tonight! Before her hips became internationally renowned, Shakira was making Spanish rock music from the age of 14. Today, Rob looks back at her crossover album 'Laundry Service,' which was released as other Latin American artists were also starting to make music in English. Later, he is joined by music journalist Suzy Exposito, who talks about why Shakira deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, her initial disappointment when Shakira dyed her hair blonde and started singing in English, and what it was like getting to interview her.
Host: Rob Harvilla
Producers: Julianna Ress, Olivia Crerie, Chris Sutton, and Justin Sayles
Additional Video Editing: Kevin Pooler
Guest: Suzy Exposito
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Transcript 11,317 words · 7 speakers
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2:06 Speaker 04 I have to admit that he annoyed me at first, like really annoyed me. Then I got over it and I made my peace with him and I mostly managed to ignore him. Then I got his album and I unexpectedly totally loved it and I still do. And so now I love him and I even love it when he annoys me because he still kinda annoys me sometimes, I have to admit.
2:44 Speaker 04 What is Wyclef Jean bringing to the table here? Precisely. I wondered that at first. Here we have superstar South Orange, New Jersey hip-hop trio, Fugees, with their transcendent and only slightly annoying to me at first cover of "Killing Me Softly With His Song", off their blockbuster 1996 album, The Score. The Fugees consist of Proz Michelle, who is currently inaudible, Ms. Lauryn Hill, who is currently singing transcendentally, and Wyclef Jean, who is currently going "one time, two times" in the background and really annoying me at first. "Killing Me Softly With His Song",
3:27 Speaker 04 made famous by Roberta Flack in 1973 and first released by Lori Lieberman in 1972. Lori is also a co-writer. She was inspired after seeing Don McLean in concert. I didn't know that. Don McLean, the American Pie guy. If you ever want to be killed not so softly with a song, listen to somebody attempt American Pie at karaoke, or even worse, attempt to sing it yourself. Way too many verses. "American Pie" is 45 minutes long and it will not softly kill you the whole time. Despite Wyclef Jean's undeniable essential role in The Fugees as rapper, lead singer,
4:12 Speaker 04 co-producer, co-writer, co-founder, and so forth, I primarily experienced him at first as the dude tossing in annoying extraneous ad-libs as Lauryn Hill sang transcendentally.
4:38 Speaker 04 That's another big hit off the score called Ready or Not, featuring objectively the coolest Enya sample of all time. No offense to Lil B. And of course, with the fullness of time, I've come to respect, to appreciate, I've come to cherish all the ad-libs on the score, all the crosstalk, the relentless interweaving of voices, the elegant chaos, the magnificent camaraderie between Wyclef, Lauren, and Praze as they hype each other up and whatnot. I cherish the Fuji's camaraderie because it won't last for very long. And in the fullness of time, I especially come to appreciate
5:18 Speaker 04 Wyclef Jean's casually, absurdly charming rapport with everybody, including himself. I dig it on the Fuji's song Manifest, when Wyclef starts rapping too intensely and he tells himself to calm down.
5:46 Speaker 04 More rappers should tell themselves to calm down more often. I made my peace with Wyclef on the score, with Wyclef constantly charmingly inserting himself into the non-Wyclef-focused parts of Fuji's songs. But I truly fell in love with him when I was watching MTV at an unsavory hour, and I caught the video for a solo Wyclef song called Anything Can Happen, where he tells us to make room five times in the first 10 seconds.
6:30 Speaker 04 Here we have "Anything Can Happen", from Wyclef Jean's first solo album, released in 1997 and called "The Carnival", or I guess technically it's called "Wyclef Jean Presents The Carnival Featuring Refugee All-Stars", but I'm not gonna say all that again. And I have to admit that those first 10 seconds annoyed me at first. The barrage of ad-libs and catchphrases and demands. "Stop telling me to make room, Wyclef Jean. I am not in your way. I am not trying to stop the shining. But within three minutes, I loved this song, 'Anything Can Happen', and I still do. The deft, rascally little horn riff, the insouciant bounce,
7:12 Speaker 04 and Wyclef tossing out a new catchphrase every 10 seconds or so. Sitting there, watching MTV at an unsavory hour, I thought "Every Man Got Disciples" was quite profound."
7:37 Speaker 04 I really dug the roller-skating-heavy "Anything Can Happen" video as well, which seemed to indicate that Wyclef Jean was a great hang, a gracious party host, a skilled mingler, a consummate entertainer capable of working up some magnificent camaraderie with everyone. I watched Wyclef gracefully roller-skating around, and I can't help but think that he and I would really get along. Toward the end of this song, he asks a bunch of questions, and whether it's 1997 or 2026, the answers here remain "no" and "hell no".
8:25 Speaker 04 My apologies to both Knicks fans and anybody seeking some peace of mind. So I catch "Anything Can Happen" at random on MTV and then I rush out to Best Buy to pick up Wyclef Jean's 1997 debut solo album, "The Carnival," and I flip out some more. In terms of Fuji's solo albums, look, I won't tell you that "The Carnival" is better than "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill," because that would be insane. But I will say that I prefer "The Carnival" to the actual Big Fuji's album, "To The Score," which is also insane, but at least it's true.
9:10 Speaker 04 That's the first 12 seconds of Wyclef's version of "To All The Girls." Shout out Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson. I love the "Don't do it, don't do it." I love it that Wyclef's still trying to convince himself to calm down, and it still ain't working. Now I'm 100% invested in all his crosstalk and catchphrases and demands. Here's a song called "Year of the Dragon," featuring Ms. Lauryn Hill, where Wyclef demands that we lock our doors six times in 10 seconds. At least this time, it's pretty good advice.
9:54 Speaker 04 And what I come to appreciate in Wyclef is the casual way he can make a hook out of anything. Even the throat-clearing first 30 to 60 seconds of his songs are full of tossed-off, earworm-type delights that still rattle around in my head sometimes. Which of course means that when he finally tries to deliver a straightforward, monster, hook-filled chorus on a relatively straightforward, monster pop song, it turns out he's ridiculously good at it.
10:39 Speaker 04 That's "Gone Till November", that's the song off the Carnival that still especially kills me softly. Though my favorite part of this song now is when Wyclef stops preaching about safe sex long enough to insult various unnamed sucker MCs.
11:09 Speaker 04 There's me at Target buying cat litter, singing "Whoa, oh, oh, you sucker MCs, you got no flow." Also, I thought Wyclef was saying, "If you don't wear condom, you see a red line there." He is not. He's not saying "red line", "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." For our purposes today, however, the most important song on the Carnival is Wyclef's version of the now nearly-century-old Cuban anthem "Guantanamera", in which Wyclef meets cute with a nice young lady despite its significant language barrier.
11:58 Speaker 04 So the nice young lady sings, "I am a sincere woman from where the palm trees grow", lyrics from the canonical version of "Guantanamera", basically. And meanwhile, Wyclef... Well, Wyclef's doing the best he can, though I'm pretty sure Wyclef Jean is only pretending there's a language barrier. Wyclef was born in Haiti, and back in 2016, he did a viral "Sway in the Morning" freestyle where he rapped fluently in English, Creole, German, Japanese, and Spanish. I love the Carnival. Its vivacity, its density, its silliness even amidst its... Self-seriousness. The Carnival is out in 1997. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is out in 1998.
12:43 Speaker 04 The third Fuji's album is out, Never. I think it's safe to say for various personal and legal type reasons. But that's all right, because Wyclef is a quintuple threat rapper, singer, producer, guitar player, hook provider, who plays well with various others. Here's Wyclef on the 1997 Destiny's Child song, "No, No, No," Part II, helpfully repeatedly announcing that it's the remix.
13:24 Speaker 04 Very helpful. Wyclef's got great rapport with Destiny's Child, though in the late 90s and early 2000s, Wyclef quickly establishes that he's got great rapport with pretty much anybody, and on a flamboyantly international scale. Wyclef works with Cuban-American pop crossover legend Gloria Estefan. He works with beloved hot pink Harlem rap ambassador Cam'ron. He works with Puerto Rican reggaeton titan Ivy Queen. He works with extra-locustious Jamaican-American battle rapper Cannabis. He works with Senegalese superstar Yousundor. He works with Hong Kong-American rapper Jin. He works with Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers,
14:09 Speaker 04 who are primarily, if not entirely, Jamaican. He works with Bono, who is Irish. Wyclef remixes "Another One Bites the Dust", a song by noted English rock band Queen. I didn't know he did that, and I don't need to hear that necessarily. And I don't need to hear that Bono song again either. But nonetheless, the turn of the century is a golden era for delightfully chaotic, boundary-crossing pop superstar team-ups. And if Wyclef Jean's voice is the first voice you hear, you are guaranteed to tremendously enjoy yourself and/or sell a whole shitload of records. Observe.
15:09 Speaker 04 Yes, indeed. Here we have Wyclef Jean, a young American self-styled ghetto blues duo called The Product GNB, and Mexican-American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitar god Carlos Santana, joining forces on the number-one pop hit "Maria Maria", from the ludicrous blockbuster 1997 Santana Comeback album Supernatural. Which, let me check here, yeah, as of today Supernatural has won 195 Grammys and sold 900 million copies. Probably will be up to 200 Grammys won and 1 billion copies sold by the time you hear this. "Maria Maria" is the most-streamed song on the Supernatural album.
15:54 Speaker 04 Now, "Maria Maria" has more Spotify streams than "Smooth", the Santana and Rob Thomas number-one pop hit of some renown. In the year 2000, Wyclef follows that up with his second solo album, which is called, brace yourself for this, "The Eclectic: Two Sides to a Book", which is styled "The Eclectic hyphen numeral two sides, roman numeral two, a book." Wyclef's got a bunch of new friends now. Hey, look who it is.
16:37 Speaker 04 It's Kenny Rogers. Rest in peace. Here we have Wyclef tossing in charming semi-intrusive ad-libs like "hip-hop", and "DJ's", and "Soundboy", alongside extra-smooth Houston-born country legend Kenny Rogers, and extra-locustious Queens rap legend Pharoah Manch, on a song literally called "Kenny Rogers: Pharoah Manch Dubplate". Hey, look who else it is.
17:09 Speaker 05 And I'm standing on the front line. Hey, yo!
17:14 Speaker 05 And the Lord asks me what I did with my life. I would say, "Wyclef murdered a sound boy."
17:24 Speaker 04 It's Whitney Houston. Rest in peace. It's a short eclectic track called Whitney Houston Dubplate, an a cappella rework of 1998's top-five Whitney Houston hit, "My Love Is Your Love", written and produced by Wyclef and his cousin Jerry Wanda Duplessis. Jerry Wanda, the Fuji's bassist and producer, and frequent Wyclef co-conspirator. The eclectic album also features contributions from Earth, Wind & Fire, and Mary J. Blige, and The Rock, back when The Rock was a huge wrestling star, but not yet a huge movie star. Listen, it is a new millennium. The world is shrinking, thanks in part to the internet,
18:06 Speaker 04 an unalloyed force for good in the world now and forever. Various spheres of global pop superstardom are frequently intersecting and blending and mutating, with so many international pop crossover events that the very notion of a pop crossover is growing increasingly, if not yet entirely, obsolete. And Wyclef Jean is a multilingual, multi-hyphenate, proven pop hitmaker who can pop up anywhere, and hang out with anyone, and yell all sorts of random, dumb, initially annoying, but ultimately weirdly absolutely essential shit on gargantuan hit pop songs. And so, there was simply nobody else on earth
18:51 Speaker 04 in 2006 who could have delivered this simple, timeless, and yes, absolutely necessary two-word message: No fightin'.
19:07 Speaker 06 No fighting. No fighting. Shakira, Shakira.
19:13 Speaker 04 My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 45th episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cole and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing "Hip's Don't Lie" by Shakira, featuring Wyclef Jean, a bonus track on the 2006 reissue of Shakira's 2005 album Oral Fixation, Volume 2. Shakira will sing the chorus now.
19:46 Speaker 04 Wyclef is still chanting "No fighting" as Shakira starts the chorus. Incredible dedication from that guy. "Hip's Don't Lie" is the best pop song in history to rhyme tension and perfection. I checked. Ad break one time.
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21:48 Speaker 04 All right, on April 11th, 2002, Shakira appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine with the cover line, "How a Catholic Schoolgirl Seduced America." It was the cool issue of Rolling Stone, featuring a list of the 50 coolest albums of all time. The coolest album of all time is apparently "White Light, White Heat" by the Velvet Underground, and the 50th coolest album of all time is "You Can Dance" by Madonna, her 1987 remix album. I'm pretty sure Madonna by herself has 50 albums cooler than "You Can Dance," but they're the experts. The first paragraph of Shakira's Rolling Stone cover story reads as follows.
22:32 Speaker 04 Quote, "Shakira was about 12, living in her hometown in industrial backwater port city in Colombia called Berenquilla, when she started to feel strange sensations inside her body. The feeling was somewhere in her gut, and she experienced it every time she heard the guitar solo in..." Guess the song Shakira is talking about here. "She told her mother, 'Mom, I feel something so overwhelming every time I listen to that guitar solo.'" Shakira's mother didn't know what to say. The girl began listening to the song over and over, just so she could be touched again in that special way by that mysterious guitar.
23:15 Speaker 04 "I still feel it," Shakira says now, rolling her eyes back and humming the riff. "That's how I discovered there was something in the electric guitar..." That was really powerful. End quote. Did you guess this song with a guitar solo that changed Shakira's life when she was 12 years old? Great job if you did. I would not have guessed this.
23:57 Speaker 04 Depeche Mode, Enjoy the Silence, from their 1990 album Violator. Phenomenal choice. 12-year-old Shakira has got exquisite taste in life-changing pop songs with overwhelming mysterious electric guitars. The hypnotic simplicity and the legitimate spiritual profundity of that guitar riff.
24:23 Speaker 04 That melody feels like an ancient, universal, omnidenominational prayer. It feels older and wiser than the earth itself. The Enjoy the Silence video also, Dave Gahn of Depeche Mode, dressed as a king with a robe and a crown, carrying a chair and hiking through various breathtaking natural solitary vistas, mountains and beaches and gorgeous sunsets amidst rad trees and whatnot. And occasionally, King Dave just plops the chair down and has a good sit. The Enjoy the Silence video has potential life-changing properties as well. You might achieve a oneness with the earth.
25:05 Speaker 04 You might convince yourself that the earth was created specifically to achieve a oneness with you.
25:25 Speaker 04 That angelic chanting vocal riff as well.
25:31 Speaker 04 Enjoy the silence will convince you that God is real, even if Catholic school didn't. That's late in the video. King Dave's hiking up a snowy mountain peak. Fun fact, here's a no longer 12-year-old Shakira on that exact same snowy mountain peak in 2001.
26:03 Speaker 04 Did you know on that last line, she's singing "they're over, here under"? "They're over," one word, "here under," one word. I dig pop songs that invent their own vocabulary. That's not the same mountain, obviously. That's a mountain on a computer. That's a mountain on a 2001 computer. This, of course, is Shakira's 2001 English-language breakout smash hit, "Whenever, Wherever," the flute riff that triumphantly concludes each triumphant chorus. I believe that's a cana flute, the traditional flute of the Andes Mountains in South America. This flute riff radiates an ancient, universal, omnidenominational,
26:46 Speaker 04 prayerful, Depeche Mode-type quality, does it not?
27:05 Speaker 04 I dig the Andean flute, man. Shakira Isabel Mibarak Rapal is born in Barranquilla, Colombia, on the northern Caribbean coast of Colombia, in 1977, to parents of Lebanese and Spanish descent. Via her Lebanese heritage on her dad's side, Shakira got into belly dancing. As indicated, on the cover of Rolling Stone, she went to Catholic school, where she tried out for the school choir in the second grade, but her music teacher thought Shakira's vibrato was too strong, and the other kids thought Shakira sounded like a goat. That's rude. Undeterred, Shakira got a guitar from her aunt and wrote her first song when she was eight years old.
27:48 Speaker 04 She wrote a song called "Gafas Ascuras," Dark Glasses. It was about her dad, who wore sunglasses to mask his grief after his son was killed in a car accident. Shakira says her very first memory was when she was two years old and she heard that her half-brother had been killed. From the onset, we are dealing with a very intense, a very deep-thinking and deep-feeling person here. That very first song appears on Shakira's first album, released in 1991, the year she turns 14. It is called "Mahia," Magic, and it is the first of two early Shakira albums that she more or less no longer acknowledges. They made a video for this song, "Mahia," though.
28:45 Speaker 04 And so here we have teenage Shakira, pinning up her voluminous hair in her teenager-type bedroom while singing "Magic, I Feel Magic, Lately Something New Is Born In Me." For the most part, we got maximum late-'80s, early-'90s teen-pop balladry here. A little Debbie Gibson, a little Taylor Dane, a little Selena. The "Mahia" album sells around 1,000 copies in Colombia. That's not good. Other than the occasional YouTube bootleg, this record ain't streaming. You'll live.
29:35 Speaker 04 Same deal, quite low sales back then, not officially streaming now, with Shakira's second album, released in 1993 and called Peligro, Danger. That's the song Peligro, and it's a great deal rowdier and stormier and clankier. And Shakira just sang, "I don't know how something can be so beautiful, a thunderbolt so thrilling in my sky. And I feel afraid that this is your love, danger, danger." It's quite early days here, and the true canonical Shakira discography has not really even begun yet. But something to maybe start thinking about is what Shakira's vocals and lyrics lose and/or gain when translated from Spanish into English.
30:20 Speaker 04 Shakira won't be singing in English and thus crossing over for a while yet. She doesn't really speak English yet, but even his collections of syllables, even his hyper-charismatic barrages of crunchy, growling consonants and howling triumphant nasal vowels, Shakira in Spanish and Shakira in English are two complementary but emphatically distinct experiences. But first, we gotta start letting this lady rock out a little bit. I seem to recall something about this lady being transformatively overwhelmed by the mysterious power of electric guitars.
31:16 Speaker 04 Here we have "Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos", "Bare Feet, Blank Dreams", or I guess technically it's "White Dreams", though "Blank Dreams" is way better, right? From Shakira's third album, released in 1995 and called simply "Pies Descalzos", that's the chorus of that song, a chorus that goes, "You belonged to an ancient race of bare feet and blank dreams. You were dust, dust you are. Think that iron is always soft when heated." The translations might go better if I do them first. Let's try that. Hit the deck. Shakira's about to sing, "You bit the apple and renounced paradise, and condemned a snake,
31:59 Speaker 04 being you who wanted it that way. And then, for millennia and millennia, you ran naked and faced dinosaurs under a roof and without a shield." The dinosaurus part might not be strictly historically accurate, but I'm really into how Shakira sings the word dinosaurus.
32:37 Speaker 04 It would appear that "Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos" is a song about conformity and rebellion. In mankind's broad tendency toward conformity over rebellion, ever since Adam and Eve bit into an apple from the Tree of Knowledge and got kicked out of the Garden of Eden, etc., plus dinosaurs, dinosaurus. A tremendously catchy and only slightly rowdy, mid-'90s alternative rock song with a provocative, deep-thinking, historical sweep, and explicit biblical overtones. Also, if you're watching the video, if you're watching Shakira in sort of jovial goth mode, writhing around with long, jet-black hair in a heavily stylized,
33:21 Speaker 04 hyper-color-saturated, mid-'90s alt-rock video environment, she's surrounded by people stuck in the ground up to their waists, their feet are pointing straight up, and their heads are literally buried in the sand. Right? If you're like me, you see all this charismatically brazen imagery, and you go, "Oh, right, Alanis Morissette." Alanis also being a pretty big deal in 1995, if I recall correctly. There's a ton of harmony between Alanis and Shakira vocally as well. The swooping bombast, the undaunted flamboyance of their voices, and the undaunted flamboyance of their songwriting. Whether they are excoriating some chump ex-boyfriend
34:05 Speaker 04 or contemplating the physical and spiritual state of the world in a "thank you, India, thank you, terror, thank you disillusionment" sort of way. The Piaz di Scialzo's record blows up. It sells five million copies worldwide, including eventually one million copies sold in America, any language barriers notwithstanding. This album reframes both Shakira within the context of Latin pop. She's way more of a boundary-pushing rocker now. And it helps reframe Latin pop globally. It demonstrates the exponentially growing popularity of Latin pop globally. Shakira is an all-universe pop star from now on.
34:48 Speaker 04 You hear her voice and you just know it, even if you can't articulate why you know it. This song is called "Antologia," "Anthology," and the chorus begins as follows. "And I learned to take the seconds out of time. You made me see the sky even deeper. With you, I think I gained more than three kilos with the many sweet kisses you bestowed." That last line about the sweet kisses, yeah, that's very pretty, but "con tus tantos dulces besos repartidos" is a much, much prettier way to say it.
35:46 Speaker 04 The line "with you, I think I gained more than three kilos" is also quite romantic in any language. All right, second half of the chorus. "You developed my sense of smell, and because of you, I learned to like cats. You detached my shoes from the concrete so we could both escape, flying for a while." I think we can agree that "los gatos" is a much, much, much prettier word for cats.
36:34 Speaker 04 Zapatos is a much, much prettier word for shoes. While we're at it, in 1998 Shakira releases her fourth album called "Dónde están los ladrones", "Where Are the Thieves". This is a phrase with both fraught, personal resonance for Shakira. In the run-up to this album, her notebook of lyrics gets stolen at the airport. And also, you know, we got plenty of thieves in society. Politicians and so forth. Perhaps a few thieves of Shakira's heart, as well. The first song here is called "ciegas sordomuda", which is an awfully lovely and sonorous way to say "blind, deaf, and mute". Chorus: "Stupid, blind, deaf, mute. Flumsy, useless, and stubborn.
37:19 Speaker 04 It's all that I've been. Because of you, I've turned into something that does nothing but love you. I think of you day and night, and I don't know how to forget you." I wouldn't say Shakira sounds particularly psyched about any of that. She hates to bug you in the middle of dinner.
37:56 Speaker 04 Dig the video for "ciegas sordomuda", in which Shakira and her band get arrested by cartoonishly bumbling slash menacing cops. Because Shakira is a bold, swaggering, boundary-pushing rocker now. Though she can still belt the bejesus out of a ballad like "Nobody's Business". This song is just called "Two", as in "you", and hey, let's mix it up and not do a translation this time. Maybe the translations are extraneous. You get it. Shakira gets her damn point across simply with the wine-dark sea depth and the distinctly Cher-esque extravagant vehemence of her voice.
38:36 Speaker 05 Porque eres tú mi sol, la fe con que vivo, la potencia de mi voz, los pies con que camino. Eres tú, amor, mis ganas de reír. Dios que no sabré decir, porque nunca podré vivir sin ti.
39:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, wow. By the late 90s, Shakira is a huge pop star in a Colombian national treasure. In 1999, fellow Colombian national treasure and Nobel Prize winner and all-universe superstar novelist Gabriel García Marquez, paragon of magical realism and author of "100 Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera," etc. In 1999, he writes a profile of Shakira for a Colombian magazine. And as repeated later in Rolling Stone, Gabriel writes, quote, "No one of any age can sing or dance with the innocent sensualities Shakira seems to have invented," end quote.
39:55 Speaker 04 As always, and God bless him for this, truly, Gabriel García Marquez, horny on main, right? He also writes, quote, "With the face of a perfect young girl and her deceptive frailty, she always had the absolute cernity. She would be a public personality of world renown. She did not know in what art or in what manner, but she did not have a shadow of a doubt, as if she were condemned to a prophecy," end quote. Global 21st century pop stardom as a prophecy, but also a sort of condemnation? That's prophetic all on its own. Shakira and Gabriel end up being good friends, and it's super sweet.
40:38 Speaker 04 Those two are your best-case scenario for national treasures, I think. Real quick, in the year 2000, Shakira does MTV Unplugged. And I gotta say that the unplugged, turbo mariachi version of that song, "Sierra Sorta Muda", will knock you right on your ass. This is rad as hell. I'm gonna flag the word pantalones here and let you process the rest on your own time.
41:19 Speaker 04 Okay, guess what? It is time for blockbuster Colombian pop star Shakira to crossover in the somewhat dorky parlance of our time. You may recall the "Latin explosion" in the United States pop music mainstream in the late 90s, led by Ricky Martin and Marc Anthony, both huge stars already, now singing in English, and Jennifer Lopez, a relative newcomer, but she caught up fast. I do believe Carlos Santana contributed a few modest hits as well. The Latin explosion is a very real, genuinely delightful, hugely consequential, etc. thing,
41:59 Speaker 04 even if it's also charmingly super clumsy, in its effort to smooth out any potential translation issues for us non-Spanish-speaking listeners. There's a great book by author and Billboard magazine journalist and friend of the show Leila Kobo. It came out in 2021, and it's called Decoding Despacito: An Oral History of Latin Music, covering 19 huge crossover songs, spanning from Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad in 1970 to Rosalia's Malamente in 2018. And at one point, the blockbuster songwriter Desmond Child, he talks about writing for Ricky Martin, and Desmond says, quote, "I delivered the demos to the record company,
42:43 Speaker 04 and someone said, 'The song's terrific, but can you write it in English now?'" "I said, 'It is in English.'" And he said, "It sounds like it's in Spanish. You have to write in English." No one knows what Vida Loca is.
43:11 Speaker 04 We figured it out. Leila Kobo writes that at one point Billboard Magazine ran a full-page ad for that particular ludicrous number-one English-language breakout 1999 Ricky Martin mega-hit. And the ad just said, "Live in La Vida Loca." And right below that, it said, "Live in the crazy life." Yeah, we got it. Now it's 2001, and it's Shakira's turn to assert her global dominance from the top of a mountain on a computer.
43:53 Speaker 04 And thus, we return to Shakira's 2001 English-language breakout smash hit, "Whenever, Wherever," which peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and appears on her 2001 English-language album, Laundry Service. And that song does indeed include the famous lines, "Lucky that my breasts are small and humble, so you don't confuse 'em with mountains." You will not mistake Shakira's lyrics for anybody else's lyrics. Shakira originally wrote this song in Spanish. It was called "Suerte," Lucky. And those lyrics were originally translated into English by none other than the legendary Gloria Estefan, crossover superstar.
44:37 Speaker 04 She of the Miami Sound Machine, she of "Bad Boy," "Rhythm is Gonna Get Ya," etc. The Laundry Service album peaks at number three on the Billboard Album Chart in America and eventually sells 13 million copies worldwide. And it lands Shakira on the cover of the cool issue of Rolling Stone. Here we have Laundry Service's opening track, "Objection (Tango)" which just so happens to be the first song Shakira wrote in English.
45:20 Speaker 04 It's not the sauciest line in this song necessarily, but I don't feel like saying any of the saucier lines out loud. And furthermore, "I love you for free and I'm not your mother" is plenty saucy enough, I think. Talking to Time Magazine in 2001, Shakira says, "I knew I could write songs in English. I just had to get over the fear. Spanish syntax is more flexible. I can put a verb before a noun anytime I need to. English is more rigid." But she also says, "The great thing about composing in English is that with three words, you can make a more direct statement." End quote. At this point, the Time Magazine writer says,
46:03 Speaker 04 "As an example," Shakira leans back and lets out a cry, "go for it." End quote. Here is another impressively direct, three-word English statement.
46:34 Speaker 04 That's a rad power ballad from the Laundry Service album called "Underneath Your Clothes", which yeah, that's a very effective phrase. But I'd argue the final word "honey" is the real masterstroke there. The sauce Shakira puts on the word "honey", the way the whole song seems to wrap around the word "honey" like a giant swirl of cotton candy. Laundry Service is a massive album. An objection into "underneath your clothes", into "Whenever, Wherever", is a candidate for the best 1-2-3 album-opening punch of the decade. But let me briefly refer you to a deeper, angrier, distinctly Alanis-like cut called "Poem to a Horse",
47:17 Speaker 04 as in, "So what's the point of wasting all my words if it's just the same or even worse than reading poems to a horse?" Also, dig the phenomenal Alanis-like venom with which Shakira spits out the words "hydroponic pot."
47:46 Speaker 04 I laugh out loud every time at Shakira singing Hydroponic Pot. It's the little things. Hey, guess what? It's time for fully crossed over blockbuster Colombian pop star Shakira to pull the Guns N' Roses, Use Your Illusions, Split Up Double Album trick. In 2005, Shakira releases two albums, Fajacion Oral in June, that's in Spanish, and Oral Fixation, Volume Two in November, that's not in Spanish. Hips Don't Lie eventually lands on Volume Two, the English album. And if you want the truth, Volume One, the Spanish album, is way better overall, but Volume Two has Hips Don't Lie.
48:29 Speaker 04 So you want to do this now? Let's do this now.
48:45 Speaker 04 Hips Don't Lie starts with our good friend Wyclef Jean. This song is a remarkably faithful remake of a 2004 Wyclef solo track called Dance Like This, which appeared on the soundtrack to a modest little film called Dirty Dancing: Colon Havana Nights. Wyclef is everywhere, all the time. Wyclef's opening chorus here is pretty much identical to what he did on that song, Dance Like This. The jaunty regal horn riff is likewise pretty much identical. But in this new, far higher-profile context, it is objectively funny to me that multilingual
49:24 Speaker 04 superstar pop collaboration specialist Wyclef Jean starts Hips Don't Lie by saying, "She make a man want to speak Spanish." And then he says, "What's your name, pretty? My house, your house," in Spanish, and Shakira reacts like he just recited five pages of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel from memory.
49:54 Speaker 05 Woman go mad, so be wise and keep on beating the size of my body.
50:00 Speaker 04 I suppose you can't discount the importance of Wyclef going Shakira Shakira constantly. Speaking of Wyclef blurting out random dumb initially annoying but ultimately weirdly absolutely essential shit on gargantuan hit pop songs. So Wyclef says, "What's your name, pretty, my house, your house?" In Spanish, and Shakira's 100% sincere besotted response is, "Oh, baby, when you talk like that, you make a woman go mad. If I'd have known it was this easy to pick up girls in Spanish, my high school years would have gone way differently." That's all I'm saying.
50:42 Speaker 04 Here's a legitimately odd sort of sonic aspect of "Hip's Don't Lie" that I'm still wrestling with. It's a lot easier to hear if you're wearing headphones, but it's the way Shakira's vocals are mixed into this song. Or I guess the way Shakira's vocals aren't mixed into this song at all. There is a physical sense here that Shakira's voice is entirely spatially sitting on top of this song, that she's singing while standing in a room where the song is playing, but she's not fully in the song, if that makes sense. It sounds like you're listening to her do karaoke to it. Shakira is an entirely separate entity from the rest of the song, including Wyclef and all of the music.
51:26 Speaker 04 This is very obviously not by accident. This is a strategic decision to push Shakira's vocals so far forward in the mix that she becomes isolated and extradimensional. I don't know yet that I'm 100% on board with this approach, but it ain't boring.
52:03 Speaker 04 And there's Wyclef yelling "Uno, dos, tres, cuatro" from another room. That radically Shakira-forward exit-velocity mix further illuminates what is singular and captivating about Shakira's voice. The percussive ferocity behind every syllable of "I can see your body movin'." The ultra-verbado on the line "my will and self-restraint," etc. It is worth noting that not everyone was thrilled with this new super crossover, often English-speaking era of Shakira. In a Pitchfork Sunday review of the Laundry Service album, written by the critic Isabella Herrera and
52:45 Speaker 04 published in February 2020, Isabella writes, quote, "Among her diehard Latin American fans, Laundry Service had its share of detractors. Many labeled Shakira a sellout, claiming her newly blonde hair, transition to English, and new look meant she was abandoning her essence as an incisive rockera and transforming into a whiter, sexier version of herself, one palatable for Anglo-audiences." End quote. I do not feel the least bit qualified to opine on that, but speaking as an American and non-Spanish speaker, coming to these two 2005 oral fixation albums with not a huge amount of prior Shakira
53:30 Speaker 04 context, I'm intrigued by the even split between Shakira singing in Spanish and Shakira singing in English, and how that difference affects the songs themselves. I'm pretty sure my favorite Shakira song ever is "Track One" on Volume One, the all-Spanish album. The song is called "En tus pupilas."
54:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's the most startling and beautiful series of words I've ever heard Shakira sing. The last line there is "Que Dios no dejo de existir." And of course, without the internet, I would not be aware that the line translates roughly to "That God has not ceased to exist." For me, it's just that I love the falsetto spike on the word "dejo" there. "Dejo," the word roughly translated as "cease." But if you want, on Volume 2, on what is otherwise the same song, you can hear that chorus in English. And now, appropriately enough, the falsetto spike I love in the last line is right on the word "God."
55:04 Speaker 04 On Volume 2, that song is called "Something." This isn't a matter of one version being better than the other, but yeah, those two choruses are somehow very different listening experiences. The soothing flow of the line "Things are what they will be" in the English version, too. Yeesh, great song. Great song in any language and at any level of verbal understanding. Take this all as a simple reminder that Shakira's music, Shakira's entire public persona, is an unavoidably eternal act of translation. If you're like me and this person first came to your attention on Whenever, Wherever, when she very, very explicitly crossed over,
55:46 Speaker 04 that's cool, but when that crossover happened in 2001, Shakira was already 10 years into her career, most of which she'd spent as a massive star. And from my perspective, anyway, what's reassuring and heartening is that targeting a new audience and often singing in a new language did not at all seem to dilute Shakira's fundamental delightful eccentricities. And I have quite enjoyed the visible audible effort, musically and otherwise, that Shakira has put into these ongoing acts of translation. I always say my hips don't lie. Yeah. When I have all this, you know, debates with my musicians about-
56:28 Speaker 05 How a song should feel or groove, a certain groove or anything. And it's not going quite well. I said, hm, my hips don't lie. That's not working. Yeah. They tell you the truth. I'm gonna, I'm gonna use that from now on. Can I borrow that? Of course.
56:42 Speaker 05 Uh, my hips don't lie. Yeah.
56:45 Speaker 04 That's Shakira on The Ellen Show in 2005, before "Hips Don't Lie" is out. How about we not give Ellen DeGeneres any more ideas for how to antagonize people? Eh? All of this crossover translation business on "Hips Don't Lie," all that effort and tension and perfection manifests itself in the rapport between Shakira and Wyclef. And as bizarre as the audio mix might be, as physically distant as Shakira and Wyclef might sound from each other, my favorite part of "Hips Don't Lie" is on Wyclef's rapped verse halfway through the song, where Shakira's voice sneaks in only on the line, "Why the CIA wanna watch us?"
57:29 Speaker 04 It's like she drops into the room through the ceiling and then falls back out of the room through the floor.
57:50 Speaker 04 I love that little micro moment of magnificent camaraderie there between our friend Wyclef and his friend Shakira. My second favorite moment in "Hips Don't Lie" is literally in the last 10 seconds, when Shakira finally gives in and delivers a simple, timeless, and absolutely necessary two-word message.
58:20 Speaker 04 You heard her. You heard Wyclef say it like 400 times, and you heard Shakira say it once. And I'm only guessing here, but I'm guessing you're more likely to actually stop fighting if you hear Shakira say it just once.
58:38 Speaker 04 We are so thrilled to be joined once again by Susie Exposito, critic and columnist and journalist, and assistant editor for the Delos vertical at the Los Angeles Times. She's worked for Rolling Stone and written for Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, and many other fine places. Susie, it's great to talk to you again. Thanks so much for being here.
58:56 Speaker 05 Thanks for having me back here, Rob.
58:58 Speaker 04 Of course. So in April, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced their 2026 inductees, and Shakira was on the ballot, I think, for the first time. But Shakira did not make the cuts this year. Why, in your opinion, does Shakira deserve to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
59:17 Speaker 05 Shakira just rocks, you know? I think that this was such an optimal time for her because what we are seeing right now with what's happening in Latin music, whether it's Bad Bunny, you know, performing at the halftime show, or Carol G., you know, Colombian pop star, headlining at Coachella, these are Shakira's children. If we're talking about legacy, you know, and how incredibly Latin music has performed not only this year, but, you know, over the last decade, I think a lot of that is thanks to artists like Shakira,
59:59 Speaker 05 you know, who cut their teeth in the 90s and did the whole, you know, crossover process from Spanish language music to English language music so that Americans, you know, who really spend a ton of money on music in comparison to the rest of the world, like, just so that more listeners could be comfortable with Latinos. And I think that, you know, it goes beyond that with Shakira, though. She's just like an incredible performer. She's a really talented musician who plays a multitude of instruments, and she sings and speaks
1:00:38 Speaker 05 in multiple languages and will, you know, meet listeners where they're at. You know, it's something that she has just really owned. Like, it's the way that she brings people in. It's her, just the international character of her music that goes even beyond Latin music or Spanish language music. And she's just one of the most memorable pop stars that we have.
1:01:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, because Carol G just headlined Coachella, you know, when you see that, or when you see Bad Buddy at the halftime show, like musically, sonically, personality-wise, when you say, like, these are Shakira's children in part, like, what aspects of Shakira do you now see carrying on with these subsequent, you know, huge pop stars that are crossing over, like, in a different way, but the same way that she did?
1:01:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think it's about, just to focus on Shakira, I think, like, in her generation of artists, you know, she didn't start totally from scratch. She was able to make her crossover moment because she was kind of like ushered in to the US. I mean, she started in Colombia, but she was welcomed by Gloria Estefan, you know, and her husband. They like had, they hosted Shakira in Miami, worked on her record, ¿Dónde están los ladrones?
1:02:20 Speaker 05 And, you know, like, they helped shepherd her into this, like, larger echelon of pop music, or of the pop music industry, because they knew how it was. They cut their teeth with Miami Sound Machine back in the 80s. And, you know, they were immigrants, it was still a very, there were a lot of limitations for artists who made music in Spanish. Before them, it was, you know, an I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz.
1:02:55 Speaker 04 Right, right.
1:02:57 Speaker 05 From Cuba, who broke that ground, you know, like, performing Cuban music on American television. So, you know, Shakira is part of a lineage herself, but the way that she made herself stand out was not just by like singing in, you know, Spanish and English, but she also rocks. Like, it was already, like, for those of us in the US who grew up on, you know, we grew up on Hole and L7 and eventually, you know, like Alanis Morissette, Liz Phair, you know,
1:03:36 Speaker 05 like, women in rock. I mean, women of the 90s. Like, there was also Shakira breaking this ground in Latin America where there was already like a very thriving rock and Espanol scene, whether it was like Maná in Mexico or Soda Stereo in Argentina, like, or in Colombia, you know, there was Juana's. But there weren't very many women, you know, allowed into this field. And we have similar stories in the United States of women who really had to fight to get through. And Shakira is an incredible guitar player. She's an
1:04:17 Speaker 05 incredible songwriter. We can talk about maybe the absurdism of her lyrics.
1:04:22 Speaker 04 Please, I would love to.
1:04:24 Speaker 05 She's a poet, but she's just such a well-rounded person who did have to, you know, she started out in pop. They wanted to make her this like squeaky clean Latin pop artist, but she's a little edgier than that and she already was from the get-go. And I think that's really inspiring. And I think that what she showed, you know, like her people like, whether it's Carol G or Bad Bunny or Jay Balvin even, like, she showed up as herself. Even in her first English language album, Laundry Service, she still
1:05:04 Speaker 05 showed up as this like weird, aggie rockera, you know?
1:05:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely.
1:05:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, she wasn't following a blueprint by that point. And that's what made her so exciting.
1:05:18 Speaker 04 Right. I wanted to ask you about those mid 90s Spanish language albums, which to me are as much alternative rock albums as they are pop albums. And you mentioned Alanis Morissette, and I hear a ton of Alanis in Shakira, and I've seen that comparison, but I've also seen people write about how like, they don't see that connection at all, and they don't understand why, you know, people are always trying to put them together. Like, who did you see in the mid 90s on those Spanish language records that first blew up? Like, who did you see as Shakira's contemporaries? You know, the singers at that time that she had the most in common with? Was that like sort of 90s L7 whole, like, alternative rock?
1:05:59 Speaker 05 I mean, it's interesting because when I asked her about it, her root was Nirvana.
1:06:07 Speaker 04 Right, right.
1:06:08 Speaker 05 You know?
1:06:08 Speaker 04 You're right.
1:06:09 Speaker 05 I don't, I don't know how deep she got into grunge really beyond that, but that was, you know,
1:06:17 Speaker 05 like, one of the first records that she bought. And, you know, it called to her because she has like a fierceness. Her whole thing, like, her nickname for herself is La Loba. You know, she's,
1:06:31 Speaker 05 she's the wolf mother. She's the huntress. And, you know, she walks on the wild side, and she was always like that from, from the beginning. And as for Alanis, you know, Jagged Little Pill, I believe, came out in 95.
1:06:47 Speaker 05 I think.
1:06:49 Speaker 04 It did. It was the same year.
1:06:51 Speaker 05 And so did Pies de Escasos.
1:06:52 Speaker 04 Ladrones, that was, that was the one that came out. Yeah, it was the same year.
1:06:57 Speaker 05 98. And so like,
1:06:58 Speaker 04 That's right.
1:07:00 Speaker 05 You know, I wouldn't even, I would not say that Shakira was like emulating Alanis. They, they were around at the same time.
1:07:09 Speaker 05 I think for Shakira, especially when it comes to her vocal style and like the just the cutting frankness of her lyrics sometimes. She does share some of those qualities with Alanis, but they're they're coming from two different starting points. I feel like Alanis, yeah, she started as a more traditional pop star and was like, well, I'm gonna get really weird and kinda coffeehouse with it. And, you know, like, I think about before Alanis doing these like weird vocal affectations. I think about like Edie Bruchel.
1:07:45 Speaker 04 Sure, and the new Bohemians.
1:07:47 Speaker 05 And the new Bohemians. And like Shakira also, she's got some songs that have, you know, similar, I don't know, quirkiness to them.
1:07:59 Speaker 05 But for her, her vocal style, she was criticized really early on in life because she sounded like a goat. But really what she was doing was she was because she was also, she was simultaneously like in a Colombian family, but also a Lebanese family, you know, her father being Lebanese. And there's, there's a huge Lebanese diaspora in Colombia. So she was, you know, living this bicultural life. And to sing in Arabic, you do have to, you know, there, there are a lot of scales. The way that they sing, they sing with like melismas,
1:08:41 Speaker 05 which is that, like that wavering, you know, like how, how far can you take this note, you know? It's like in, it like leaps and then, you know, it sinks and it's all about having a really flexible range. And so given her upbringing, like singing in Arabic and
1:09:08 Speaker 05 That technique was really important for her. So, you know, I can't speak to Alanis' technique, but for Shakira, it's something that is actually rooted in her heritage. And she turned it into something a little grungier.
1:09:25 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:09:25 Speaker 05 Which is why I think she's so memorable.
1:09:28 Speaker 04 What did you make of, you know, 2001 Laundry Service? That's where she makes this big pop crossover. She's singing in English now, Whenever, Wherever is a huge hit. And I get the sense that like, her established fanbase, like, not everyone was thrilled with this, that she was singing in English now.
1:09:45 Speaker 05 Right.
1:09:45 Speaker 04 And that she seemed to be courting a whole new audience. Like, what was your reaction, you know, at this moment where she's getting huge, you know, and singing in English now primarily?
1:09:55 Speaker 05 It's so funny because I remember feeling disappointed. I was 12 when Laundry Service came out. The most disappointing thing for me was that she went blonde. And I'm someone...
1:10:08 Speaker 04 Right, right.
1:10:10 Speaker 05 I started tuning in to Shakira's music when I was like, like nine.
1:10:17 Speaker 05 And I was a little rocker, you know, like, my, my parents were very Gen X, so they did bring me up on Nirvana and Hole and, and like, Green Day and stuff like that. So, I loved, uh, songs like Inevitable, that's my favorite one. That's where she really rocks out and is like, head banging in video. And so seeing her make this transformation, you know, like, she moved to Miami and then went blonde. And I was like, what the hell? This is some...
1:10:49 Speaker 04 That's how they get you.
1:10:51 Speaker 05 This is a poser shit, Shakira? What is up?
1:10:57 Speaker 05 I should say, you know, I was also a mall goth at this point in time.
1:11:00 Speaker 04 Sure, sure, that's naturally judgmental, yeah, but I, I respect it. I respect it.
1:11:06 Speaker 05 Well, you know, it was like, the, the people we associated with blondes were like, pop stars.
1:11:12 Speaker 04 Sure, sure.
1:11:13 Speaker 05 We're talking like, late 90s, early 2000s, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and so I think...
1:11:19 Speaker 04 Gwen Stefani.
1:11:20 Speaker 05 Gwen Stefani, like... Going blonde for her, it was like, oh no, she's mainstreaming.
1:11:32 Speaker 05 But I remember, I remember walking it back a little bit because if you watch the video for Underneath Your Clothes, in the beginning of the video, she's being interviewed by like an American guy, and so he asks her about, you know, what it's like, you know, being a Latina artist in the States or something like that, but she answers him completely in Spanish and then she cuts off the interview, or like she just walks away when he's like, wait, but can you say all that in English?
1:12:05 Speaker 04 It's a great start to that video. That's really a beautiful thing.
1:12:09 Speaker 05 That was her way of saying, hey, you guys, I'm meeting you where you're at, can you meet me a little further, you know, in the middle? And that's why I say that, you know, Bad Bunny is like one of her children because he went, you know, I mean, he went all the way with it. He's like, nope, you gotta meet me all the way over here, like 100% Spanish. I don't care what you think, you know, try and learn something for a change.
1:12:38 Speaker 04 Exactly.
1:12:41 Speaker 04 No, totally, because I think about, you know, the Shakira and J Lo Super Bowl, right? Which was 2020, which was like February 2020 before the world went to shit, which I think sort of distorts, but it was fantastic and people loved it. But yeah, like just Bad Bunny makes this huge crossover move without ever making that concession to speak in English, to sing in English, the way Ricky Martin did, you know, the way Shakira did. How much is it, how did that happen? What do you think it is that made, you know, the big Latin pop stars of today never really have to cross over in that like dorky sort of now we're gonna really go for a global, like you don't have to do that anymore the
1:13:25 Speaker 04 way that Shakira did in 2001? Like, why do you think that is?
1:13:30 Speaker 05 I will say, like, a huge part of it is that Latinos have, like Latinos in the US have grown. The population has grown immensely. Now, we are about, we occupy about 20% of the population in the United States, and a lot of us listen to music in Spanish. We...
1:13:51 Speaker 05 Buy a lot of music, like we, we buy a lot of concert tickets. We are fueling the music economy in ways that, you know, at levels we've never seen before. If you look at the RIAA and their stats, um, for like the, the Latin music revenue, it just increases by the double digits every year. That's, I mean, just in terms of how many people are spending money on Latin music. And I, I think, yeah, population growth is one thing. Also, I don't know, we're just really cool. Our music gets around a lot, you know, whether,
1:14:31 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:14:33 Speaker 05 Whether it was, you know, uh, despacito, um, or whether it's, uh, I don't know. I mean, at this point, Bad Bunny has so many frickin' hits. Or, you know, what's happening?
1:14:45 Speaker 04 Rosalia.
1:14:45 Speaker 05 Rosalia, um, you know, coming from Spain and like, just, I don't know, intriguing the hell out of people with, with her, you know, eclectic take some pop and, um,
1:14:57 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:14:58 Speaker 05 I, I think the fact that, you know, even, I think about Beyonce collaborating with J Balvin on that song, "Mi Hente", you know, also having more major artists, you know, come and, uh, you know, they want to collab with Latin artists. I mean, Justin Bieber jumping on despacito was a huge example of that.
1:15:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:15:18 Speaker 05 And so I think there's, there's generally like more openness to music in other languages. Think about K-pop as a sensation in the United States. I, I just think that, um, the American listenership is also more curious these days.
1:15:39 Speaker 04 Around the oral fixation records, you know, you can start hearing the same song in English and Spanish, you know, across the two volumes. Like, is there a divide for you between Shakira singing in Spanish and Shakira singing in English? Do you think she changed fundamentally as a singer or as a songwriter? You know, when she's jumping from one language to the other?
1:16:01 Speaker 05 Um, I would say in the early days, I thought so. You know, especially with her lyricism. It would feel very like, um. I mean, what, what, what song did, were we talking about? We, oh, I think we were talking about She Wolf. Like, I'm starting to feel just a little abused like a copy machine in an office. I love that song, though.
1:16:24 Speaker 04 I love that song, too. And that's a great line, but it's, it's, it seems like she's always done that. And she said, she's like, I have very colloquial, you know, like casual lyrics. And it's, it's, it's partly translation, but I think it's partly the way she's always been.
1:16:39 Speaker 05 Yes.
1:16:39 Speaker 04 You know, like, there, there's a through line to her lyrics. And it's not just that she's singing in English and writing in English now that's causing her to write like this. Like, she's always been like this. There's always been an edginess and an eccentricity to her. That's like part of what makes her great.
1:16:54 Speaker 05 Exactly. I think the difference between the English oral fixation and the Spanish one, I actually, I feel like she really stepped into her power as like a, as a singer-songwriter. And I, I think that her collaborations on these records were incredible, too. You know, they were, um, like, distinct records in their own right, even if she did like English and Spanish versions. I think, um, she did a good job of moving between the two without feeling like it was super hokey or, or contrived, at least in my opinion. You know, I love that, um, in the Spanish version, she wrote some of the songs with,
1:17:40 Speaker 05 uh, Gustavo Cerati of Soda Stereo, who is like, I mean, he's the man. You know, when you're thinking about rock in Espanol, he, I, I'm trying to think of what the comparison would be. I guess like people love him the way that they love Radiohead. Like, he had, where he has like that, um...
1:18:01 Speaker 05 Very, I mean, he was so inventive and like the two of them together. There's like a video of them singing together that's just fantastic. You guys should look it up, but they're both very unique artists in their own right. They're both innovators, but then on the, on the English language side, Shakira teaming up with like, like Carlos Santana. Oh my God, and Wyclef Jean, which is what we're here to talk about, isn't it?
1:18:33 Speaker 04 Ostensibly. We were gonna get to it eventually. It's fine. It takes as long as it takes. I mean, by, by certain objective measures, right? Like this is her number one, this is her only number one pop hit. You know, it's her most streamed song now. Like "Hip's Don't Lie" is her biggest song. By some measures, like it's, do you go back to that song at all? Is it among her best songs? Like where are you on "Hip's Don't Lie" like specifically?
1:19:00 Speaker 05 I think objectively, as like a music critic, yes, it's one of her best songs.
1:19:07 Speaker 04 Okay.
1:19:08 Speaker 05 Personally, yes, it's one of her best songs. Nostalgically, absolutely just blows, you know, so many others out of the water. I don't know. I don't, at the end of the day, my favorite song is "Inevitable", because I will always be a rocker, but "Hip's Don't Lie".
1:19:28 Speaker 04 Sure. Always a mulgoff at heart. What is it about "Hip's Don't Lie" nostalgically? Like what, you know, that's 2006, right? Like what mind state does "Hip's Don't Lie" put you in when you hear it now?
1:19:43 Speaker 05 Flirty, frolicking, you know? I
1:19:47 Speaker 04 Yes, yes.
1:19:49 Speaker 05 I will never forget, I was like, um, one of like the few Latinas like at my summer camp, where I was a counselor at like this girls camp. And I just remember like being in, I was 16. It was like the summer of 2006 and I was showing the other girls how to like move their hips. And they didn't know. It was like that video Shakira and Beyonce.
1:20:15 Speaker 04 Right, right, right. Were you successful? Yeah.
1:20:18 Speaker 05 Yes, yes, but the funniest thing was how shocked some of my bunkmates were because they were like, we didn't know punk girls could do that. This, it was
1:20:28 Speaker 04 Right, right.
1:20:29 Speaker 05 A big culture shock in many ways for my bunkmates. But I just remember like feeling really proud of that and like,
1:20:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:20:38 Speaker 05 I felt like, I, I think a lot of like alternative kids of color like might share this experience, but I think it's like, we often feel divided or like pulled into two different directions where it's like, okay, I have to, like I want to be true to my school in a way. I, I want to show that I'm still hardcore. But I also want to be true to like my heritage. I don't know, my soul. And sometimes my soul wants to dance reggaeton. And so does my body. And I can be all punked out and still want to do that.
1:21:22 Speaker 05 Which is why I think, another reason why I really, really admire Shakira because she was like, why not both? Why not everything?
1:21:28 Speaker 04 Right. Why not everything?
1:21:30 Speaker 05 Just try everything. Just like in the song where she plays a gazelle. What movie is that? Zootopia?
1:21:38 Speaker 04 That's right, yes. I forget what that song is called now, but that's
1:21:41 Speaker 05 Try everything.
1:21:42 Speaker 04 That's a banger. That's a banger in its way. For, in a Zootopia context, that's, that's a legit song. My, my five-year-old loves it. So that's all I need to know, I guess.
1:21:53 Speaker 05 I don't blame your kid for that. It's a banger. But you know, like, that's, that's why Shakira is such a treasure because she also gave
1:22:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:22:00 Speaker 05 my teen self permission to embrace my hips.
1:22:06 Speaker 04 Right.
1:22:07 Speaker 05 Which I, I just, I didn't know, I didn't know what to do. If you put me on a, you know, in, in a family party, I remember my, my family members would struggle to teach me how to dance salsa because I was wearing these huge like combat boots.
1:22:21 Speaker 04 It is, it is, there are some aesthetic issues with that, yeah. Your pants are dragging on the ground. Yeah, I get it.
1:22:28 Speaker 05 And so when "Hipstomely" came out, it was like, I don't know, there was something like, like something raging inside me, whether it was hormones or just, you know, the like
1:22:44 Speaker 05 coming of age. I don't know, but Shakira like tapped that, like she, she just woke something up in me and in a lot of us. And I think musically, just the, the mix of genres that she plays with, you know, she has the like Jerry Rivera's salsa trumpet incorporated into the song and then she's got this like really hard hitting reggaeton beat. And, you know, Wyclef Jean, he, I mean, he's, he's just so cool.
1:23:21 Speaker 05 And he sings about the connection between like Haiti and Colombia, the like Caribbean connection, the Pan American connection. It not only sounds good, but I think it also speaks to a lot of like, you know, kids from a diaspora, kids of immigrants. Just tapping into this very global groove and bringing it to American radio.
1:23:44 Speaker 05 What a moment.
1:23:45 Speaker 04 Just to wrap up, I think you interviewed Shakira after she was nominated for the Rock Hall. Like you talked to her about that honor, like, do you think she'll get in and do you think she cares? You know, everyone is like, oh, it's such an honor. Oh, I'd love to be in. Do you think it matters to her whether or not it ever happens? And do you think it'll ever happen that she makes the Rock Hall?
1:24:08 Speaker 05 I mean, at this point, she's won hundreds of awards, but this particular honor for Shakira.
1:24:17 Speaker 05 It's a special one for her. You know, I only got to speak with her for like a few minutes. She's a very busy woman, but
1:24:24 Speaker 04 It appears that she's very busy, yes.
1:24:28 Speaker 05 She's always, she's a girl on the go.
1:24:32 Speaker 05 But for Shakira, she's not just a rock star. She's a student of rock and roll.
1:24:38 Speaker 04 Right.
1:24:38 Speaker 05 So this would be such an honor for her. I mean, even just being nominated, for her, it was something special. Because if she wasn't inducted, she would be the first Latin American born woman to be inducted into the Rock Hall. So far, you know, we have like Joan Baez was inducted, Linda Ronstadt was inducted. And they're both proud Latinas. They've, they've performed music in English and Spanish themselves. But Shakira would have been the first of her ilk. And I think it was just so cool that they recognized her as like someone who's contributed to rock and roll history. I think she has.
1:25:24 Speaker 05 Just she's moved the needle, not just for Latinas, Latinos, but like women in rock. And I think she deserves her flowers for that.
1:25:35 Speaker 04 Suzy, this has been so wonderful. It's always awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for being here.
1:25:40 Speaker 05 Yes, thank you for talking about one of my favorite people in the universe.
1:25:46 Speaker 04 Awesome. This has been great. Thank you.
1:25:51 Speaker 04 Thanks very much to our guest this week, Suzy Exposito. Thanks to our producers, Juliana Ress, Olivia Creary, Justin Sales, and Chris Sutton. Additional production by Kevin Poole. Animations and graphics by Chris Calliton. Additional art by Matt James and special thanks to Cole Kushner. And thanks so much to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to "Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira. We'll see you next week.
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