Shakira | The scorned women in Latin music
I had originally planned to release one long article on 5 scorned women in Latin music. However, their stories are so rich, I decided to do a series instead. Opting to give each woman the time and care she deserves. The first in this series is Shakira. Head over to the introductory article to find out about the other women on the list.
Shakira's decision to collaborate with Bizarrap was unexpected. At the time, he was an independent music producer who mainly collaborated with underground Hispanic rappers. Shakira, on the other hand, is one of the biggest Pop stars in the world.
However, given the portfolio that Biza has built over the past five years, he was the most sensible collaborator to bring forward Shakira's contempt for her ex-husband. Along with his audience reach, Biza's pulse over the underground Latin urban scene placed him in the middle of a Latin music renaissance. Moreover, the producer's YouTube channel has been the vehicle of some of the most listened-to diss tracks for Hispanic audiences in prior years. Sharika chose the perfect producer for her message.
When Shakira released this session, it became the third song in a trilogy of breakup songs: Te Felicito (2022), Monotonía (2022), and Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53 (2023). All songs show a different stage of a breakup story.
In Te Felicito, she sang about losing herself to a relationship only to end up broken and used by someone she -now- knows is a two-faced liar. She sarcastically congratulates an unnamed person for being a good actor, "I congratulate you/ you act so well/I have no doubt about it/ Continue with this character, it suits you well." At the time of this release, news of Shakira and Pique's breakup had not been published.
She hadn't released an album since 2017. Instead of releasing an album, she released a few collabs and a single. Te felicito could have been another stand-alone collaboration. At the time, I didn't think of this single as profoundly personal to Shakira. The public was not aware of cheating. I thought of the single as one a performer of her stature might release without necessarily drawing from experience. I thought the "you" she sang about was more of a figure anyone going through a breakup could relate to. "I congratulate you on how well you act" is impersonal enough to evoke a figure in the public's imaginary.
On Monotonía, she becomes more reflective. Instead of blaming the other person's duplicity, she blames boredom for the breakup. She says, "It wasn't your fault, nor was it mine/ Monotony was to blame for this." He stopped being who she knew him to be; he turned into a narcissist seeking the spotlight at the expense of the relationship.
A second single with a breakup theme seemed more specific, though. The examples she cites in the lyrics are tailored to a particular person. "All of a sudden, you were not who you used to be/You left me because of your narcissism/You forgot what we once were." Not everyone can say that they have had a relationship of the sort. But it's still general enough that the public can empathize with a breakup where the partner turned out to be a narcissist, more interested in his image than in his partner.
If Te felicito was not a stand-alone collaboration, then Monotonía could have hinted at a new era. Yet, I still did not consider the concept pertinent to her experience. I had made the mistake of not remembering her roots as an emotive singer-songwriter. With the release of the music session, it became clear that this was a trilogy about heartbreak.
Te felicito showed anger through sarcasm; Monotonía showed anger through reflective understanding. Her music session with Bizzarrap joined the narrative arch of a breakup by bringing the scorn element to the forefront. Breakups can be messy, but our emotions towards them may change and fluctuate even in the most amicable of breakups. The more information we learn about our former partners, the more our resignation can change to anger.
Shakira || BZRP Music Sessions #53
In the music session, the most significant difference is that she drops the nebulous second-person character she sang in her previous two songs. She cleverly named Piqué and his mistress, Clara. There is no speculation if the song is about them. She says “perdón que te salpique” or “sorry I dissed you”. She expertly uses inflection, timing, and wordplay to denounce Piqué in the song. She sings, "tiene nombre de persona buena, claramente no es como suena," or "she's named after a good person. Clearly things are not how they seem". She uses wordplay to name them without naming an actual proper subject.
In said song, her message is direct: despite him being a World Cup winner, Piqué still managed to show her how much of a loser he truly is. She exposes his true nature to the public: he is an unreliable, ditzy, cheating mama's boy who fumbled his biggest win, Shakira herself.
However, her words are less direct. She expresses all these sentiments through metaphors and word association. Without actually saying such words. Like her clever namedrop, she uses the tradition of rap and underground music to create metaphors, similes, and associations.
Instead of saying Piqué is unreliable, she sings about his absence when her father was sick. "As much as you claim to be a champion, when I needed you, you gave me your worst version." Instead of a ditz, he does not exercise his brain. "Ah, so much gym time. How about you exercise your brain a little bit too?" Piqué could only understand the lyrics using cars and watches as analogies, "You exchanged a Ferrari for a Twingo/You exchanged a Rolex for a Casio." Instead of saying he is a cheater, we are told he went looking for Shakira's replacement—a cheaper, less experienced version of Shakira (her words, not mine): "I am worth two twenty-two-year-olds." Instead of just saying he's a mama's boy, she gives us insight into how Piqué built a house next to the couple's for his mother to live in—and left Shakira on her own with a witch of a mother-in-law. "You left me with a mother-in-law as a neighbor, with the press at the door, and a debt to the IRS." She alluded to the witch part when she stationed a witch on the balcony that faced her ex-mother-in-law's house, not in the song itself.
She spat sweet venom with a smile on her face while releasing a danceable club song that propelled the song to earn 14 different Guinness World Records. It is only fitting that the song was sung by dozens in front of Piqué at a club event he attended, rubbing salt in his wounds. Shakira read Píqué for the lowlife that he is and earned herself two Latin Grammys in the process.
She used her session to make it known that she would not let a man bring her down. She is the one who will humiliate him publicly and profit from it. She will treat him just as viciously as he treated her when he cheated on her. And I say, good on you, Shakira. Make him suffer. She solidified her entry into a tradition of scorned women in Latin music. I celebrate her female rage.
*all translations are by the author
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