Nietzsche once said, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. This feels no truer than when discussing the power pain has to inspire exceptional art. That is exactly what the new Shakira album Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (translation: women no longer cry) is. Her first album since 2017’s El Dorado, this was one of the highest anticipated comebacks in recent memory. So much has changed since El Dorado; Latin music has become a bonafide mainstay of global music, we now stream music en masse, and in Shakira’s personal life, there has also been an immense change. It is this change, her separation from long-term partner Gerard Piqué and the following highly public split, that the album primarily focuses on. Don’t be fooled, though; this is anything but your run-of-the-mill breakup album.
Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran is overarchingly one of the boldest projects of Shakira’s entire career, rubbing shoulders with her ballsy crossover to English language music with her 2001 release Laundry Service and her pivot to electronica with 2009’s She Wolf. The album comprises a kaleidoscope of genres. Some, such as Reggaeton and Rock, are staples of Shakira’s lengthy discography, while others, such as Afrobeat and Mexican Norteño, are daring new spaces for her creatively. Her choice to explore a number of diverse genres does not, however, leave the album feeling incohesive as it is tied together through its lyrical content. Shakira’s lyricism, especially in Spanish, is nothing short of poetry, and on Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, it feels like she is in her prime as a songwriter. Shakira’s choice of collaborators also buoys the album with features from a collection of Latin music’s most dynamic artists, such as Rauw Alejandro, Karol G, Grupo Frontera, and Bizarrap.
The album opens with Puntería (translation: aim), a collaboration with Cardi B that is as explosive as it is sensual. The song heavily leans into an upbeat pop sound with dance and funk influences that characterise a common theme across many of the album’s tracks. For Shakira’s fanbase, it feels almost overdue that she put out a song with a female rapper, and Cardi truly delivers on this track. Switching between rapping and singing, her vocals are strong enough to hold up to Shakira’s, a true feat given this album has arguably the strongest vocals of her entire career. The song is underpinned by some of Shakira’s most suggestive lyrics yet, leaning into the signature eyebrow-raising innuendo that is characteristic of Cardi’s biggest hits. The song is followed by La Fuerte (translation: the strong), produced by Bizarrap. La Fuerte pushes the EDM direction that Shakira and Biza explored in their original collaboration. The production is lush and has a sound that feels evocative of early 2000s dance-pop while pushing the envelope and ultimately feeling ahead of the curve. When Shakira and Bizarrap first linked up, history was made, and La Fuerte feels like a fitting followup to the duo’s previous global hit (more on this later).
Following La Fuerte is Tiempo Sin Verte (translation: time without seeing you) and Cohete (translation: rocket) featuring Rauw Alejandro. Both songs, while having different base genres and concepts, continue to establish that on this album, Shakira is singing with authority and emotional maturity and is being explorative with her musical choices. Tiempo Sin Verte feels evocative of earlier tracks in Shakira’s career from albums like 2010’s Sale El Sol with a soft rock guitar instrumentation that is emblematic of the sound Shakira has mastered since the mid-1990s. Cohete, in contrast, is a statement about Shakira’s comfort with pushing herself; a heavily disco-funk-influenced track, it is a departure from other avenues of dance music she has previously explored, and a feature from Rauw Alejandro only furthers the track’s power.
The album then hits what I feel is its next phase, with the track (Entre Paréntesis) (translation: in parentheses) with the Regional Mexican band Grupo Frontera. The song is, in my opinion, one of the strongest on what is an incredibly strong album. Shakira’s ability to pay homage to a spectrum of Latin genres is second to none. On (Entre Paréntesis) she sings of heartbreak in a way that feels equally dramatic as it does intimate. The lyrics capture the pain of knowing someone has lost interest, ending the relationship without formally cutting things off. This track has some of the album’s strongest lyrics, exploring the sense of coldness at the end of a relationship and how noticeable it is when the flame has been extinguished. A highlight on this track is as it closes, Shakira treats us to her signature wolf howl, reminding us, as she does multiple times on this album, that she is THE She Wolf.
Next, we dive into Cómo Dónde y Cuándo (translation: how, where and when), the album’s essential rock song. Shakira’s origins are as a rock artist, and she returns to her genre of genesis with a passionate and apathetic song dealing with the frustrations of daily life. Her vocals are bold, powerful, and quintessentially Shakira. As is the way on Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, we then jump into an entirely different genre again with Nassau, Shakira’s take on Afrobeat. As a fan who was following the album’s rollout, it was this song that I most heavily anticipated. Afrobeat is a burgeoning genre on the global music scene and something Shakira has not touched on before. Nassau is the album’s most laid-back song, Shakira sounds dreamy as she sings about finding new love set to a song that is made for drinking too many cocktails on a tropical beach.
Nassau takes us into the album’s emotional apex with the following song, Última (translation: ultimate or final). Última was the last song to be written for the album, and it serves as Shakira’s final diary entry about her breakup, compiling all of the most painful emotions she experienced over the last two years with a steadfast honesty that exposes all of her most intimate feelings with dignity. The song is the most stripped-back of the album, and maybe even her entire career, with only a piano to back her resolute and tender vocals. Of all of the songs on Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, it is Última that is the most necessary for completing the story Shakira seeks to tell.
We then move into the second half of the album, with the collection of singles that were released prior to the album’s release. Beginning with 2022’s Te Felicito (translation: I congratulate you), we are now guided through the steps of grief Shakira experienced at each phase of her breakup. Te Felicito is impressive still as it retains a fresh and engaging sound amidst newer songs, helped in part by Rauw Alejandro (his second feature on the album), who reminds us once again that Shakira is cognizant of new voices and perspectives in Latin music. Te Felicito is followed by Monotonía (translation: monotony) featuring Ozuna. Monotonía is a raw bachata ballad that shows Shakira embracing brutal realism, singing about how her ex-partner cheated on her because he couldn’t handle the monotony of a stable relationship. She resigns herself to this reality through beautiful and painful bachata, a genre she has only touched on a few times prior to this current era.
Finally, we find ourselves at what is probably the definitive track on the album and its namesake, Shakira: BZRP Music Sessions, Vol. 53. For those who don’t know, this is a song Shakira made in collaboration with Argentinian producer Bizarrap as her diss track to Piqué and his mistress. On the track, she is her most brutal, not wasting a single bar of the song to do anything but lyrically eviscerate that man. It is on this song that Shakira sings the line heard around the world: ‘las mujeres ya no lloran, las mujeres facturan’, meaning women no longer cry, women get paid. The song is evocative of the entire ethos of the album as a whole; on Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, Shakira practices radical honesty as she shies away from none of her turbulent emotions associated with what she has been through. She uses gemstone imagery in the album’s artwork, and it is true that this album, like a diamond, reflects the multifaceted nature of heartbreak and rebuilding yourself after loss.
After Session 53, we are treated to the second female collaboration on the album with TQG (abbreviation of Te Quedo Grande, translates to out of your league), a duet with fellow Colombian Karol G. TQG continues the bold confidence and brutal lyricism of the previous song, with Shakira laughing at her ex-partner and his actions, knowing that she ultimately was out of his league. TQG is a model Reggaeton song, leaning into Karol’s predominant genre with a production that meets in the middle, melding Karol’s laid-back style and Shakira’s full-bodied and multi-genre artistic imprint. We then switch gears to Acróstico (translation: acrostic), which is an incredibly beautiful ballad dedicated to Shakira’s sons, who sing on the track. It is her standing statement that despite what she has lost, she has what is most important to her: her sons. Little more needs to be said about Acróstico; it’s honesty and her earnest promise to be there for her children above all else speaks for itself.
The album draws to a close with two final songs (and then two remixes). The penultimate original track is Copa Vacía (translation: empty cup) featuring Manuel Turizo. For me, this is probably the album’s weakest track, and while it would be a standout on most albums, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran is just so strong as an album that it renders this song weaker in comparison. The beat and lyrics are still lush, detailed, and poetic as is standard for Shakira. We then come to the final original song, El Jefe (translation: the boss), the second Mexican song on the album with the band Fuerza Regida. This song is one of the boldest of Shakira’s entire career, a working man’s anthem about wealth inequality and unfair working conditions dedicated to her son’s nanny, who informed her of Piqué’s infidelity. It is a polka song, fast-paced with Sinaloan sierreño instrumentation that demonstrates Shakira as a chameleon of genres and lyrical concepts. She also sneaks in a quick diss to her ex-father-in-law, asking why he hasn’t yet ‘stepped foot in the grave’. Ouch, don’t mess with Shakira.
Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran is, without a doubt, Shakira’s most powerful, feminist, and artistically daring album in at least 15 years. While the album pivots genres and energies frequently, Shakira’s power as a vocalist and a storyteller makes it feel incredibly cohesive. As a lifelong fan of Shakira, it is an album that makes me feel proud; it is a totem of the feminine power that she has cultivated over her 33 years long career. Vocally, she has never sounded stronger, using her signature affectations and flares while concentrating her delivery to sound nothing short of perfection. Her lyricism is also at an all-time apex, rivalling even her most poetic work on albums such as 1998’s Dónde Están los Ladrones? She is unafraid to write with a sharpened blade when she has to and express rage, then pivot to playful lyrics that feel refreshing and light, all before exposing her rawest emotions on the most heartwrenching ballads of her career. Shakira was a long-time friend of Gabriel García Márquez before his death, and just as he did in his literature, she writes with a unique sense of magical realism that defines her lyrical point of view.
The album as a whole is a powerful statement; women are so often expected to hide away and conceal their pain or to process infidelity in specific ways that we deem to be acceptable. Shakira, one of the most famous women on earth, experiences these pressures and expectations on a global scale. Instead of bowing to them, she breaks them. Her previous album felt in many ways like a collection of related songs without a particular ethos or thematic direction, but this album is the opposite. Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran is a fully realised concept, with all of the pieces of Shakira, all of the eras of her career, and all of her real and raw emotions coming together to create a full portrait of her and her life. She has always been known as a creatively progressive and experimental artist. Still, this album feels like her victory lap, proving that 12 albums into her career, she is stronger than ever and the unchallenged Queen of Latin Music. There is no question about it: Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran is the most important album of her entire career, and with it going 7x platinum in the US within a day of release, it is safe to say that it is an instant classic.
Listen to Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran here:
