We always thought Colombia's best export was coffee. Now we have a new favorite--Shakira. This Barranquilla-born pop princess has been giving her fans in Latin America and Europe a rush ever since she was 13, when she released her first of four Spanish albums. Americans didn't get hooked on Shakira until the recent release of her first album in English, "Laundry Service."
Here is what you should know about Shakira: Don't compare her to Britney. Sure, they have the same hair color, and Shakira appears in Pepsi commercials, too. But the similarities end there. Shakira's hip-shaking belly dance leaves Britney's pelvic thrust in the dust. Britney performs perfect pop, while Shakira's sound is flavored with Spanish and Arabic influences (her father is Lebanese).
And unlike Britney, who sings, "I'm not a girl, not yet a woman," Shakira isn't confused. At 25, she's all woman. In her provocative single "Whenever, Wherever," she makes a promise only a worldly woman can make. She vows to "climb the Andes solely to count the freckles" on her lover's body. No wonder her name translates to "woman full of grace" in Arabic.
We're not the only ones smitten with her. Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Márquez describes her this way: "Shakira's music has a personal stamp that doesn't look like anyone else's. And no one sings or dances like her, with such an innocent sensuality, one that seems to be of her own invention." In other words, she's hot and talented.
Dumb-blonde jokes don't apply to Shakira. She wrote and produced "Laundry Service" herself, even though she'd just learned English. She devours literature, saying, "I had to read Leonard Cohen and Walt Whitman in Spanish, but now I read them in English." Someone translates Leonard Cohen into Spanish?
Shakira hopes her newfound fame isn't just part of a trend. She says, "I consider myself Latin and I'm proud of it. But I don't want to be part of any explosion. After an explosion, only ashes are left behind." We have a feeling her fire will burn for a long time.
"I don't want to be part of any explosion. After an explosion, only ashes are left behind."
