She’s both a thoughtful poet who rolls footage of W and Saddam playing chess on a gameboard bearing the Earth’s face during her concerts and a bottle-blonde ditz who dressed as an Amazonian cowgirl while crawling in mud for her first English language video, “Whenever, Wherever.”
And for her latest Spanish-language album Fijación Oral, Vol. 1, Shakira didn’t mean the double entendre… she says.
The first single, “La Tortura,” a flamencoed-up cumbia ballad to a certain player—namely Alejandro Sanz—stacks up easily against the best of her catalog. It highlights what Shakira is best at: taking a cultural sound like the tango violin hook on her past hit “Objection” and creating a stellar pop song around it.
The rest of the album is decidedly less fun and yes, a little boring. She goes the tired samba route on “Para Obtener Un Sí.” “No” is all about Shakira’s Lebanese roots, but it comes off as a dreadfully tepid Gipsy Kings outtake. The fidgety punk of bands like Café Tacuba and Aterciopelados is emulated on “Escondite Inglés,” while “Día Enero” sounds totally generic, like something Paulina Rubio would sing.
Oh yeah, there’s also house music and some French and German lyrics. The girl is obviously trying for too much.
In fact, the only other standout on the album is “La Pared,” a rousing, creeping track that, with its nasal gypsy howl and haunting bravado, sounds genuinely Shakira.
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