Shakira / YMMV - TV Tropes

Adorkable: If she's not Ms. Fanservice, she's this. Even when doing steamy dance moves, it's with a sense of utter glee. This woman is clearly having a lot of fun doing what she's doing (some of this can be attributed to the fact that she also has ADHD).
Best Known for the Fanservice: She's very acclaimed as a singer and dancer, but her Ms. Fanservice status as a performer tends to overshadow her sometimes. This has also affected a couple of songs.
- "Whenever, Wherever" has the infamous lyric about her breasts being "small and humble".
- Her most famous song is Hips Don't Lie, which coincidentally has her doing a lot of belly dancing in the video.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
- In the middle of the generally laidback and serious Fijacion Oral Vol 1., comes the Rock Lobster inspired "Escondite Ingles". The effect is jarring, coming as it does between the wistful "Especial Dia" and the dark "No", but the song is well liked by fans and showed Shakira could still have fun amongst the serious material.
- Shakira did this with the Arabic techno of "Ojos Asi / Eyes Like Yours" on Donde Estan Las Ladrones / Laundry Service respectively, but in both cases they were at the end of albums that were largely filled with alt-rock.
Covered Up: "Hips Don't Lie" is a cover of "Dance Like This" by Wyclef Jean and Claudette Ortiz, with virtually the same instrumental, but with new vocals from Jean and Shakira. It was inevitable this would happen since "Dance Like This" was only recorded for the Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights soundtrack in 2004 and was never a single. Jean and Shakira both wrote additional lyrics for the song, and contributed to its hit potential, raising both their profiles in the process.
Crazy Is Cool: "Loca" ('crazy [girl]') pretty much sums this up. She even does Caramelldansen.
Discredited Meme: The video for "Underneath Your Clothes" opens with a scene of a reporter asking Shakira what it's like to cross over and sing in English, and she then just replies in Spanish. This was put in to emphasise how tired she was getting of every interview asking that question.
Fanon Discontinuity:
- For some of her Latin American fans, ¿Dónde Están los Ladrones? was Shakira's last work.
- Even some of her English-speaking fans prefer to think of her solely as an incredible Colombian artist, denying the existence of Laundry Service (citing the narmy lyrics resulting from bizarre forced-rhyme), and question the peroxide job in her foray into the English language market.
- Her first two albums Magia and Peligro, made when she was 13 and 15 respectively, are ignored by both Shakira and many fans. Her young age and lack of creative freedom (despite writing many of the songs), are why they were taken out of print.
First Installment Wins:
- Her first "official" album,^note Piez Descalzos, is her highest-selling album in her native Colombia, and considered her best album by many fans.
- Her first English album, Laundry Service, is her highest-selling album globally, and though it received negative reactions from much of her fanbase (see Fanon Discontinuity), another portion of listeners consider it her best.
Harsher in Hindsight: Shakira had dedicated a lot of songs to soccer player Gerard Piqué, her husband of 12 years, among which include "Me Enamoré", which talks about how much she loves him. In 2022 the couple split up due to Piqué allegedly cheating on her with a younger woman, which was later confirmed. In April of 2022, Shakira released "Te Felicito", which many have speculated is about her calling out Piqué for his lies. Later on in October of the same year, she released "Monotonía", which is about him leaving her heart-broken.
Hilarious in Hindsight: One line from "Inevitable" has her saying that she doesn't know a thing about soccer becomes this when she married Piqué. Shakira has noticed this, however: in the Live in Paris DVD, she changes that line to "y ya entiendo de futbol",^note in reference to her marriage.
Les Yay: The music video for Can't Remember to Forget You with Rihanna, it's very hard to remember they are talking about a guy and not each other. The making-of documentary more so, where the two singers go on about how sexy they find one another and, at one point, RiRi squeezes Shakira's butt.
Memetic Mutation:
- I never really knew that she could dance like this/ She makes a man want to speak Spanish/ Como se llama, bonita, mi casa, su casa...
- SHAKIRA! SHAKIRA!
- Whenever, wherever...
  - Lucky that my breasts are small and humble / So you don't confuse them with mountains!
  - Le ro le le lo le, Le ro le le lo le!
- Waka waka eh eh!
- Near the end of her music video for Loca, she does the Caramelldansen.
- "Shakira's a she-wolf? I thought she was a gazelle?"
Narm: "She-Wolf". While many critics gave high-scored reviews to the song, they still consider the howl goofy. And the lyrics are too weird for their own good. Some people think the howl was cute, though.
Narm Charm: The odd lyrics of the above songs are part of the charm for some, coupled with some genuinely good music.
Older Than They Think:
- Despite being thought of as a late 90s/early 2000s star, Shakira was on Colombian TV and playing live shows as early as 1990.
- "Brujeria" from Peligro is her first Arabic influenced song, predating "Ojos Asi" by five years. Some of the dance moves for "Ojos Asi" were originally choreographed for "Brujeria" as well.
- "Donde Estan Corazon" was recorded for a 1994 compilation LP as an attempt to get Shakira popularity after the first two LPs hardly made any impact. A video was shot to promote the track and it ended up getting so popular on Colombian music channels that Sony gave Shakira the chance to make "Pies Descalzos", for which she decided to change her sound. As a result, it's the only track on that LP to use the style of singing she used on her first two LPs, for which her lower range hadn't quite matured.
- "Un Poco De Amor" from Pies Dezcalzos is her first collaboration with a male musician (Jamaican dancehall singer Howard Glasford) and the first with lyrics in English (she sings harmonies on some of Glasford's). Additionally, in the Pies Dezcalzos period she branched out of Spanish and recorded several songs in Portuguese to appeal to the Brazilian and Portuguese markets, which foreshadows her crossover into English. She actually recorded an English version of "Estoy Aqui" titled "I'm Here", but there are no details on whether it was recorded at this time or later.
- Rather than being an exclusively Colombian album, Donde Estan Las Ladrones was actually recorded in Miami and featured various US musicians amongst its lineup, and was very popular with the Latino communities in the US. There were tentative attempts to record it in English too, but Shakira's English wasn't good enough at the time (English versions of "Inevitable" and "Ojos Asi" (Eyes Like Yours) exist). It wasn't until her MTV Unplugged release won her several Grammy awards that she made a conscious attempt to sing in English.
Sampled Up:
- "Hips Don't Lie" from Jerry Rivera's "Amores como el nuestro". They're different genres and markets, so most people not knowing the original may be due to that.
- Said song is actually a remake of a Wyclef Jean song called "Dance Like This", which sampled "Amores como el nuestro".
- Also, "Waka Waka" of African song "Zangelewa" ('Golden Sounds', in Fang language).
Signature Song:
- English - "Whenever, Wherever", "Underneath Your Clothes", "Hips Don't Lie", "She-Wolf", Can't Remember to Forget You, and "Waka Waka"
- Spanish - "La Tortura" or any of her songs before Laundry Service, most notably "Inevitable", "Ojos Asi" or "Estoy Aqui".
Unnecessary Makeover: A lot of people on both sides of the language barrier asked, "Was the blonde necessary?"
Vindicated by History: The tracks on her Laundry Service album are seen in a much better light thanks to twenty years of nostalgia. "Whenever, Wherever" received massive cheers when she performed it at the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show, and it even reached Number 1 on the charts afterwards!

YMMV / Shakira

Edit Locked