I believe today’s track is the first straight-up love song in the ’31 Numbered Songs’ series, and it’s a beauty. Shakira wrote ’23’ for her partner and the father of her two sons, Spanish soccer player Gerard Piqué, who she met when he was 23. She was a decade older.
It’s nice to see a celebrity pairing where the woman is older, even if Shakira could still pass for 25.
MTV was hip to the huge Hispanic music audience earlier than most, featuring its first Spanish-language artist on Unplugged in 1995 ( Los Fabulosos Cadillacs received that honor).
They did one or two per year after that, with the most popular coming in August of 1999 when Shakira recorded her acoustic session in Manhattan. Shakira ended up releasing this set as an album which sold 5 million copies worldwide and won a Grammy for Best Latin Pop album.
Shakira might have lost in ugly fashion to The Beatles in Montauk Madness, but at least she has a hit album on her hands. El Dorado (which translates to The Golden One) is the singer-songwriter’s ninth studio album, and the fourth straight to feature songs in both English and Spanish.
Though my understanding of Spanish is rusty to the point of non-existent, I have always been a bigger fan of Shakira’s work in her native tongue. Parts of her early English-language albums felt more like calculated attempts to expand her audience rather than organic artistic statements. But as that audience has grown, I love that she now jumps between languages when it fits the song and not the marketing plan. Continue reading
I can’t pretend there’s any suspense in the penultimate Round One matchup in Montauk Madness. As much as I enjoy Shakira’s work, especially in her native Spanish, she ain’t putting up a fight against The Beatles.
Of course there is no shame in losing to the Fab Four. And this blog post led me to the discovery that Shakira just released a new album, El Dorado, which I promptly downloaded. So it’s really a win for her.
I am not a fan of political songs. Nothing turns me off more than a pop star name-dropping world leaders and drumming up sympathy for the down-trodden or hungry.
I once had a rule that any song containing the name “Margaret Thatcher” must suck, until Aimee Mann earned an exception with ‘You’re With Stupid Now.’
Meet Me In Montauk 