Pop
Shakira
Wembley Arena, London
Angus Batey
Tuesday March 20, 2007
The Guardian
Britons often have problems accepting rock music that comes from non-English-speaking countries. If Johnny Foreigner sticks to his own language, he at least retains an exotic allure, but when he starts to sing in English, we think "Eurovision" and instinctively wince. The success enjoyed in the UK by Shakira Isabel Mebarak Repoll, then, is all the more surprising. Since 2001, the Colombian singer-songwriter, hugely successful in the Spanish-speaking world, has been waging a serious assault on the anglophone market. When she was learning English, she would not only sing in the language but write in it, too: in 2005 she released two different albums, one written and sung in Spanish, the other in English, each wolfing down a smorgasbord of musical influences. Last July, her Hips Don't Lie single hit No 1 in time to become the last song played on Top of the Pops.
Hips Don't Lie is saved until the end of this show, her first British gig in four years, and its blending of hip-hop, reggaeton, jazz, Latin, pop and soul influences results in an irrepressible moment of pop euphoria that Shakira works expertly. It ends with an elaborate Bollywood-styled set piece, six sari-wrapped dancers dipping and swirling amid an explosion of pastel- coloured ticker-tape. Yet despite the carefully planned choreography, Shakira's music remains earthy and natural. There are times tonight where she and her multi-national band sound like a world music gazetteer. Shards of Middle Eastern influence (her father is Lebanese) collide with filigrees of flamenco guitar work in the epic No, and excitable hip-hop rhythms coexist with Caribbean moods and calypso bounce during La Tortura. While the influences are diverse and their application sometimes scattershot, the unifying constant is a hard-driven rock sound that gives the set momentum and purpose.
It certainly helps that Shakira is an avid student of the art of rock performance. There are bits of every great pop show(wo)man here: a connect-with-the-people foray into the crowd taken straight from the Bono playbook; a black T-shirt donned for an Alanis-like high-decibel emote; respectful nods to, and lifts from, Madonna, Beyoncé and J-Lo. And, whether she is writhing during Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos or starting Whenever, Wherever with an elaborate belly-dance routine involving a silver rope, Shakira's expressive sensuality gives her show a power and potency that renders language barriers irrelevant.
http://music.guardian.co.uk/live/story/0,,2037871,00.html
Shakira, Wembley Arena, London 
Shakira
Wembley Arena, London
Angus Batey
Tuesday March 20, 2007
The Guardian
The success enjoyed in the UK by Shakira Isabel Mebarak Repoll, then, is all the more surprising. Since 2001, the Colombian singer-songwriter, hugely successful in the Spanish-speaking world, has been waging a serious assault on the anglophone market. When she was learning English, she would not only sing in the language but write in it, too: in 2005 she released two different albums, one written and sung in Spanish, the other in English, each wolfing down a smorgasbord of musical influences. Last July, her Hips Don't Lie single hit No 1 in time to become the last song played on Top of the Pops.
Yet despite the carefully planned choreography, Shakira's music remains earthy and natural. There are times tonight where she and her multi-national band sound like a world music gazetteer. Shards of Middle Eastern influence (her father is Lebanese) collide with filigrees of flamenco guitar work in the epic No, and excitable hip-hop rhythms coexist with Caribbean moods and calypso bounce during La Tortura. While the influences are diverse and their application sometimes scattershot, the unifying constant is a hard-driven rock sound that gives the set momentum and purpose.
It certainly helps that Shakira is an avid student of the art of rock performance. There are bits of every great pop show(wo)man here: a connect-with-the-people foray into the crowd taken straight from the Bono playbook; a black T-shirt donned for an Alanis-like high-decibel emote; respectful nods to, and lifts from, Madonna, Beyoncé and J-Lo. And, whether she is writhing during Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos or starting Whenever, Wherever with an elaborate belly-dance routine involving a silver rope, Shakira's expressive sensuality gives her show a power and potency that renders language barriers irrelevant.
By Nick Hasted
Published: 21 March 2007
The screaming teenage Colombian girls are one clue to what an eccentric global phenomenon Shakira is. She has so far penetrated mainstream British consciousness only with the impish lyric of her big 2001 hit "Whenever, Wherever" about her "small and humble breasts". But 14 of her 27 million album sales were from four earlier Spanish-language LPs. A performer since she belly-danced in public aged four, and a recording star since she was 13, she has creative control as her own writer-producer that exceeds even Madonna's, and separates her from moulded, helpless superstars such as Britney. That explains the unpredictable, organic feel of tonight's show, which is clearly the creation of an artist, not a corporation.
Shakira comes on rolling and thrusting her low-trousered hips. A natural dancer's physicality powers her performance, but the tawdry self-exploitation of most of her female rivals is dodged. Largely Spanish lyrics tumble out, and, tossing about her long blond mane, she is willing to look a tousled mess. Song and performance styles twist with similar abandon. She plays glittery silver guitar on "Don't Bother" and grabs a harmonica for "Te Dejo Madrid" (trilingual, she learnt her ornate English from Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen albums). Classical piano and ballet play on the screens when she changes into a billowing, bat-winged red dress for "No", more Kate Bush than Beyoncé. Her fans dance, holler Spanish and wave Colombian flags.
"Whenever, Wherever" is given the full treatment. Chittering synths, treated guitars and horror-score rattles overload the intro with ideas, before Arabian music, Pink Floyd riffs and pumping Europop accompany her most sultry belly-dancing yet. Her boundless, open-hearted physicality, 100 shows into this tour, rejects stiffly choreographed pop-star routine. She runs beside the crowd, shaking hands and offering the mic. Twin drummers thunder in as she regains the stage - a high-showbiz moment.
Despite Shakira's musical variations, from small acoustic combos to piano ballads, her sound's unlikely and eventually grating heart is synth-heavy Eighties rock. No single element of what she does is hip, but the unconventional combinations and uncensored delivery keep her surprising. Most importantly, such as when the Gypsy violins and New-Wave keyboards reach a wild, pounding finish on her encore, "Ojos Asi", this is living, breathing music. The pop industry has not yet tamed Shakira into product.
Source:
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article2378382.ece
Daily Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/03/20/bmshakira120.xml
