11/8/2019 Shakira Laundry Service Album
So of course you were going to come up here and give it a shot. Your press release says that you wanted to compose your own songs in English, so you packed up all your people and set up a portable studio in rural Uruguay. You should have stayed there.
It sounds like it was fun, hanging out with your notebook and your rhyming dictionaries, writing songs in your third language. You wrote some good ones there: 'Objection (Tango)' is fine rockcraft with drama and a sense of humor: 'Next to her cheap silicon I look minimal / That's why in front of your eyes I look minimal / But you gotta know small things also count' is a brave statement in these days of suspiciously ripe teenybop flesh peddlers, and the little growly semi-rap break at the end is fun as hell. I dig the semi-disco of 'Ready for the Good Times' and the indie-strum get-off-yer-ass tale of 'Poem to a Horse' ('I'd rather eat my soup with a fork / Or drive a cab in New York / 'Cause to talk to you is more work'). And something as spunky as 'Rules', in which you lay down all the things your new boy can do and tell him 'Don't forget that you're condemned to me', could only come from someone who is supremely confident in her own abilities.
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But I guess you must have lost your confidence somewhere, because Laundry Service does not sound like the kind of album you really wanted to make. It's far too glossy, too poppy, too too everything. Take 'Underneath Your Clothes', for example. It could have been a great little thing, maybe a guitar and some light hand-hit percussion, perhaps a touch of the ol' orquestra at the very very end. Simple, graceful, light.
But now it's a damned mess. And, to be honest, you're listed as the producer - rather defensively, too: 'This Entire Album Produced by Shakira' - so it's your fault that this track goes awry. The tell-tale touches start at about the 20-second mark, little guitar things that virtually scream 'Producer!' , and then the arpeggios come in underneath your voice, serving to emphasize the debt that your song owes to the Bangles' 'Eternal Flame'. By the time I'm two minutes in, I'm hearing 'Penny Lane' trumpet figures - by the end, a potentially cool song has been studioed out of existence. I counted 29 different names involved with this song.
But where were you? Are you just the singer, now? Similar crises of confidence abound here. 'The One' could have been something special, and really showed an important side of you. The idea that you love your guy so much that you're actually going to learn to cook, 'To buy more songs / And write more happy songs', is funny and original.
It coulda been a contender. But the layers are added, bit by bit: cheesy guitar solo, more of those damned strings, and suddenly this sweet confessional song is a power ballad now. Didn't power ballads go out with, oh, say, Aerosmith? And let's not even talk about 'Fool', which now sounds as thought it was cranked out by Rob Thomas or one of those guys who aim for generic and hit it right on the nose. Do you really want to be generic, Shakira? It doesn't become you.
You need to shine, you need to strut, you need to shake your ass. I've seen you do that in the video for 'Whenever, Wherever' and on Saturday Night Live. You're quite good at it. So how come that's the only English-language song on the CD to which anyone actually could shake any ass? Maybe it's not your fault that you lost your nerve and made an extremely safe album. Maybe you were been talked into it by the Estefans.
Their fingerprints are all over this record. Didn't anyone tell you about them?
They were pretty cool when they started out, Shakira, but now I don't know what to tell you. They are not considered cutting edge or cool or anything like that. I know that Emilio Estefan, Jr. Has been involved in your career for years, but the man has never heard anything that he didn't want to turn into clean-sounding pop for the Wal-Mart aisle display. And Gloria isn't all that much better - she is perfectly content to croon whatever boring little song comes down the pike. So when I read that she's helping you with lyrics and he's 'executive producer', and I hear the unmistakable hum of 'moneymoneymoneymoney' in the background, I can't help but ask: 'Why the Estefans?'
You could have gone out to L.A. And hooked up with Gustavo Santoallala; he's had a lot of success translating south-of-the-border into 'what's a border?' You could have gotten together with any number of actual rock producers who would have been more sympathetic to the whole Shakira thing. Hell, there are some hip-hop producers who could have really turned this album into something superb. Instead, you went pop with it, and that means that you only ever want to be the flavor of the month like Ricky Martin.
Is that really what you want to be, Shakira? Look: we need your wit, your intelligence, and your charm. Do us a favor: don't hide from us.
Take the bold step, take a deep breath, and strip off the layers for the next album. Like Yeats said, 'There's more enterprise in walking naked'.
Singer Shakira was born in 1977 in the stricken Colombia and departed on her thirteenth year to the big city of Bogota to look for work as a model. Instead, she had a record deal in the foreseeable future on bag and she has an ever-growing group of fans worldwide since 1995 to.
Laundry Service is Shakira's third studio album (not counting a remix plate and MTV Unplugged) where Shakira shows that she absolutely is more than a pretty face. Her voice sounds like a cross between Anastacia and Dolly Parton (with a countrysnik) wherein theatrical extracted is in the good rock and pop songs. Although there is advertised with the genre latino – the album is produced by Emilio, husband of Gloria Estefan – the album sounds like a rock plate with here and there a touch of Spanish guitar, panflute, but as many bandoleon harmonica, rockabilly guitar (!) and fanfare-like blazers.
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That makes Shakira's music much more adventurous and exciting than Jennifer Lopez or other big latino singers. That they already distinguish was in 2000 with a Latin Grammy Award seems more than justified.
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