We finish off today with Shakira by herself, singing about the dude she’s actually married to.

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David Sheffieck: Remember when the stars made love to the universe? Shakira may have topped that (jk nothing will ever top that) by hitting on a guy in a club with a line about how they should have ten kids together. May we all be graced with such unbounded confidence, and with the ability to make it work so breezily.
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Cassy Gress: I like Shakira a lot, and while she doesn’t sound a super bunch like herself here (more lispy, less throaty), and while this is definitely not the best Shakira song in the world, it’s hard for me to pick on a song where she’s so exuberantly in love and personal about it. Entirely possible I’m giving it more credit than I would for someone I didn’t feel as strongly about. But that chorus with “Look at that beautiful thing / What a round mouth / I like that beard”, complete with helpful arrows in the video, feels awfully genuine to me. It makes me think of all the times he’s been gamely grinning and bobbing his head in her fútbol videos.
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Rebecca A. Gowns: A song that’s playful in both tune and lyric: the classic Shakira wink. The backing track is so simple, it’s almost tinny, like it’s coming from a nearby low-grade headphone. Truthfully, it borders on annoying. But it’s no matter — it’s the paper plate beneath the true entree, Shakira’s warm raspy voice.
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Thomas Inskeep: Musically this is crazy-unfocused, seemingly hopping from one stylistic marker to another with abandon, which makes it a fairly unenjoyable listen. Fittingly for this song, Shakira’s vocal is flavorless, which doesn’t become her. This is her worst single in years.
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Peter Ryan: Shakira’s always had a penchant for blunt-force specificity in her representations of desire — here putting her stamp on the love-at-first-sight encounter by seemingly narrating her own — but it usually doesn’t sound so, normal? If this is how it went down then it could use a bit of fiction — Piqué might have some divine facial features but the little details here don’t actually amount to a credible object of lust, and though the track’s endearing enough to get some of the point across, “Chantaje”‘s wake isn’t doing Middling Dancefloor Shakira any favors.
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Will Adams: Here’s a handy case-in-point to the opening line of my Black M blurb. Only Shakira could elevate a standard club encounter with this enjoyable and personalized tone, from a promise of ten kids to doing “I like your beard” just as well as Kesha. Meanwhile, the music molds to her voice, every sound — the sliding guitars, the buzz synth, the subtle EDM vocal hooks — winding along in the fun.
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