The Singles Jukebox

Separation, Shakira-style!

[Video]
[8.35]

Nortey Dowuona: FC Andorra are 7th in the Segunda Division; Karol G is on the Barbie soundtrack. I say this divorce was the best thing to ever happen to them.
[9]

Peter Ryan: A comprehensive public clobbering, an icy-caustic bookend to the relationship that wormed its way into her discography with the ebullient “Me Enamoré”, stuffed with double entendre indictments sharp and specific enough to preemptively render any rebuttal pathetic. Structurally it ranks among her most ambitious, all polyrhythms and quasi-freestyle character, the latter part no doubt owing to the BZRP Music Sessions format. There’s catharsis in her kicking open the door on the private strife about which she’d previously stayed tight-lipped, and in the meta-narrative of the megastar shaking off the dead weight and finding creative reinvigoration. While they’ve become fewer and farther between in the last decade, she hasn’t lost her knack for creating a Moment — I heard this at the corner store, wafting out of passing car windows, on the dancefloor — she wasn’t kidding about cashing in.
[9]

Alex Ostroff: The main attractions here are Shakira’s righteous and yet somehow still icy fury and her impeccable wordplay. She wishes her ex the best with her “supuesto reeemplazo”, but makes it absolutely clear that nobody is capable of actually replacing her. In someone else’s version of this revenge-pop anthem, your husband absconding with a woman half your age might be a source of insecurity, but for Shakira it’s another sign of his cluelessness — at 44, she’s worth two 22-year-olds and presents it as a simple and obvious fact. Bizarrap initially seems to take a backseat, but he brings plenty to the table, evolving his production and adding details that accentuate and complement hers. Tonight, I’m obsessed with the way he brings in that reggaeton-esque percussion right at “Me dejaste de vecina a la suegra/Con la prensa en la puerta y la deude en Hacienda” and how that propels the song into Shakira’s triplet of creíste/heriste/volviste rhymes. Shakira’s best material in the post-Fijación Oral era of her career has consistently been her Spanish albums, but until the restructuring of streaming and Billboard chart metrics in recent years, their popularity (and pop excellence) was never properly reflected. Of Pique’s many, many sins, the one I’m most angry about was causing Shakira to relocate to Spain — away from her main collaborators and recording studios — and thus keeping her away from the radio at a time when audiences’ engagement with global pop (and especially music in Spanish) seems much bigger and more permanent than the limited crossover moments of the 90’s and early 2000’s. Her post-BZRP releases have mostly been collaborations with an extremely varied list of rising Latinx stars in a wide range of genres, from a reggaeton heartbreak diss track with Karol G to a regional Mexican polka track with Fuerza Regida about labor rights and Pique firing the nanny who snitched on him for cheating. I have absolutely no idea what to expect from Shakira next, and I couldn’t be more excited. 
[10]

Harlan Talib Ockey: 1) Cultural reset. 2) I love mess. 3) We now go live to Pique stepping on a rake. 4) Infinitely more energy than “Te Felicito” or “Monotonía”. 5) Actually, Shakira hasn’t sounded this forceful in a long time. 6) Bizarrap at the top of his own game rather than trying super hard to make corridos, for example. 7) “¡LAS MUJERES YA NO LLORAN, LAS MUJERES FACTURAN!”
[9]

Aaron Bergstrom: As a non-Spanish speaker, I’m probably missing out on some of the nuance here, but allow me to offer a brief letter of recommendation for 1) listening to this for the first time with minimal context, 2) focusing only on Shakira’s inflection and intonation, 3) picking out a few lines where she sounds especially pleased with herself, 4) thinking “ooohhhh, I bet these are daggers,” and then 5) looking up the English translation and confirming that every single one is just as vicious as you’d hoped. Because let me tell you, it is a delightful experience.
[8]

Jessica Doyle: Cuando era niña, en mi escuela podría estudiar solamente francés; no  empecé a aprender hablar español hasta desde cuatro o cinco años. Hoy  tengo una cita cada día con Duolingo y puedo comprender unas frases,  pero quiero apreciar el idioma mucho más, y lo que me motiva, es esta  canción. Shakira canta como sus palabras tienen pesos y formas; se puede  esucuchar y sentir cuando ellas se chocan con el suelo–“mastique’ y trague’, trague y mastique’,” “con la deuda  a la Hacienda.” Además, ella gana confianza y acelera, asi que cuando  ella canta, “Yo valgo por dos de 22,” no es un cope defensivo, es una  declaración de hecho. El idioma es su arma y su poder. Y el ritmo es  único; ella no lo podría haber canto en inglés. Entonces, escribí este  blurb en español; no lo escribí en inglés y traducé. Sé que hay muchos  errores (Google Translate me dice que “I translated” no es “traducé,” es  “traduje”), pero creo que sería un error más grande hablar de esta  canción en inglés. La escucho y me hace querer estudiar y aprendar más.
[8]

Will Adams: An undersung aspect of what makes “Pa Tipos Como Tú” so compelling is how Bizarrap’s beat switch-ups throughout the song propel it forward. It begins as an icy breath of Italo that recalls She Wolf‘s more delirious moments. Midway through the second verse, the floor caves in to reveal a heavy, rhythmic groove, as if gathering power for the next attack. The second chorus arrives with a walloping synth bass, reminiscent of “Padam Padam” but even more menacing. It makes for one of the most exciting listening experiences of the year, instilling an uncertainty of where this thing is headed next. All the while, Shakira floats on top, mercilessly delivering a brutal takedown that leaves nothing in its wake.
[8]

Tara Hillegeist: The last time anyone on Shakira’s level tried to write a song about how mad she isn’t like this, it was over a decade ago, and “Irreplaceable” that effort absolutely wasn’t, drowned in goopy self-affirmation and breathy lack of confidence. Compare the liquid contempt swirling around every syllable, here, the bared-fang sharpness of the enunciation as she howls “You thought you’d hurt me, you only made me stronger/Women no longer cry, women get paid”. Shakira’s fury isn’t the fury of a woman left abandoned, with only scorn as her cold comfort — as one of pop’s inarguable queens, she has an entire country at her back. It’s only natural that she can’t simply settle for destroying her ex’s memory alone, when there’s an entire dancefloor waiting to destroy it in her honor instead. Pity Shakira’s ex-husband, who will go down in pop-cultural history as nothing more than the expertly character-assassinated trophy this song leaves behind to hang on the she-wolf’s wall, alongside all the others who thought to make a prize of her instead, only to find, as ever, that it’s not their world to rule, but hers. Or don’t; the viperous specificity with which she approaches the subject matter in question makes it readily apparent that from her perspective, this reckoning was only ever held at bay by the love he squandered in the first place. The other woman should probably count herself lucky Shakira only holds her accountable for thinking herself entitled to taking Shakira’s place in his affections; if there were any other reasons, Shakira clearly wouldn’t have hesitated to include them. Let the dancefloor show mercy, then, if there’s any to be found. 
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Shakira’s hips don’t lie; their involuntary sway, she’s said, is how she identified Bizarrap’s track as a Depeche Mode homage too chilly to pass up. And yet the track is not nearly as cold as the way Shakira vaporizes her song’s targets from on high. That her specific complaints are relatively petty — basically, that getting cheated on has stuck Shakira with a lot of rich person problems — is beside the point. Repeatedly, she drops the real names of two real-ass people, syllable by syllable via careful wordplay, as if putting a scope into place. Her vocal is mixed loud, processed past any human timbre, and arranged to fill all space in the track. She sounds less like an individual jilted woman than a metallic weapon, than the genderless, pitiless, all-judging voice of God. Finally comes the killing smite: “and now you’re with someone just like you.” It’s not often that experiencing a punching-down feels this bitter and inevitable, this compelling and correct.
[10]

Rose Stuart: I said in my review of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire” that, in the year of breakup songs, hers was the only one that wasn’t full of posturing. This is the only song where that posturing feels earned. Where other songs made neither their pain nor strength convincing, Shakira comes out triumphant, coming for blood with each finely picked detail in every savage line. The song never stops going in, even using the name of her ex’s partner for some masterful wordplay. I’ve heard many breakup songs that try to go at the singer’s ex, but this is the first time I’ve actually felt sorry for the song’s subject — after all, it must be hard to show your face in public after being roasted this thoroughly. 
[9]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: A swaggering, sexy encounter that has me simultaneously wanting me to say “I’m too good for you, bitches!” and “Step on my face, mother!”
[9]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: lol hell yeah
[8]

Alfred Soto: With any insignificant number of synths per track signifying as “1980s” the response to this track was a given, but the thudding insistence of its beat muscled past those assumptions. As alert as a burglar with good tools, Shakira talks so much shit that the judgment fades before the verdict. Imagine if they’d released this at the height of the 2010-2011 EDM epoch.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: Bizarrap’s sleek, gleaming disco sets off the lack of adventure in Dua Lipa’s 2023 comeback; these cool synths glide with a propulsive sense of drama. Shakira, uncharacteristically, is the weak spot though, allowing herself to recede into the background. She doesn’t always command attention, but even her reserve is usually compelling all on its own. Here, she’s content to vibe, waiting for someone else to make something happen. 
[5]

Brad Shoup: Impeccably imaged: we’re used to that from Shakira. But the chilliness is something else: a brisk disco kiss-off that fogs up the anguish she’s audibly fighting. The way she paces herself is really cool: icy pop in the first verse, a switch to reggaeton cadence at the end of the second that fully detonates in the third. She’s acting as her own feature rapper: just another power move.
[8]

Ian Mathers: I was the high mark last time we covered Shakira, but even if I was going to be here (doubt it!) it’ll clearly be for very different reasons. With “Don’t Wait Up” it was that fucked-up little organ (or whatever) riff, and while Shakira was good, her performance wasn’t specifically what drew me to the track. Here, while the production is good, it’s her performance that’s much more central. Even before my monolingual ass looks up a translation you can kinda just tell from the vibe that someone is getting it in the neck, and/or Shakira is feeling her oats (“and,” as it turns out) and then once you do… “Sorry, I already took another plane” is a hell of a way to start. Plenty of specific detail lurking in there, but the repeated “I was too big for you and that’s why you are with a girl just like you” fairly blisters as it goes past.
[8]

Taylor Alatorre: All else aside, it must really suck to not only have the Tsar Bomba of diss tracks dropped on you, but to have that track sent out to the world with this podcast episode-ass title. Like, at least Jay-Z can boast that he’s part of the reason we all say “ethered” now; no such consolation here. The tossed-off nature of the release, while adding insult to injury — you don’t even get an album track! — makes it harder to admit this into the pantheon of the greatest diss songs of all time. But I get the sense that legacy is not really what Shakira is concerned with here. This is a crime committed in the heat of the moment, in broad daylight, and everyone will remember where they were when they witnessed it. For her, that is enough.
[7]