Shakira: Love in the time of Football

By Tommy MacGillivray

It is perhaps one of life's great tragedies that when the average person thinks of the Colombian singer Shakira, their minds don’t immediately think of her lyricism. Perhaps their first thought is of her technically proficient and compelling dancing, her string of worldwide hits spanning over a 30-year career, or the incredibly philanthropic work done by her Pies Descalzos organization to improve access to vital primary education in Columbia. The typical listener may be forgiven for only after all these things noticing the words she is singing. When they do, many still misunderstand her lyrics, especially those in English which often feel so jarring it seems as if the translator must be confused (Wherever Whenever’s “lucky that my breasts are small and humble so you don’t confuse them with mountains” comes to mind.) But this is not the case. And Shakira does not use a translator. As a long-time listener, I have always found Shakira stands out from her superstar peer group for having a writing voice that is just as unique as her singing voice. In order to prove my point, I invite you now on a guided tour of Shakira’s discography and propose a take that is perhaps as unique as the singer herself. For Shakira, love is football.

The career of Shakira, born Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, is typically regarded to have ‘kicked off’ with ‘Pies Descalzos’, a collection of guitar-driven folk-tinged cuts released in 1995 which would later be the inspiration for the name of her philanthropic organization. Preceded by two admittedly less successful projects, ‘Magia’ (1991) and ‘Peligro’ (1993), ‘Pies Descalzos’ marked the singer's first internationally promoted project and was produced with a meager budget of $100,000, indicative of the prediction of her label, Sony, that the album would only move 100,000 copies. In case you were wondering, the album has sold over two million copies across Latin America, and is accountable for a mere 2% of Shakira’s lifelong worldwide album sales. In many ways, the album set the tone that would characterize Shakira’s work, with songs that are so catchy that you might miss lyrics such as “a foot for my face, the night for the day”. Despite there not being any direct references to football in the lyrics of ‘Pies Descalzos’, the idea of what Shakira defines love as does begin to form. I intend to show how Shakira views love as the uniting of two by learning about the other and what makes them themselves. By understanding the interests of the lover so too does it seem like Shakira will be able to love her beloved. This is shown in the album’s fifth single Antología where Shakira sings “Y fue por ti que aprendí a querer los gatos”. Through love, Shakira changes herself to suit the interests of the partner, a trait that persists throughout her lyricism and says a great deal about what Shakira considers love to be.

The first explicit reference to football in Shakira’s lyrics can be found in the album that follows Pies Descalzos, 1998’s ‘¿Dónde están Los Ladrones?’ In the first verse of the album’s third single Inevitable, Shakira lists what she considers to be her ineptitudes. 

Si es cuestión de confesar

No sé preparar café

Y ahora entiendo de fútbol

Creo que alguna vez fui infiel

Juego mal hasta el parqués

Y jamás uso reloj

Among these is the notably bizarre “no entiendo de fútbol”’. While this is likely an example of melodramatic exaggeration on Shakira’s part, she is after all Colombian and it is extremely unlikely that she has no conception of football, the idea is clear that it's something she does not know or care about and considers this a defect when viewed through the eyes of her beloved. The song continues to expound the almost helpless feelings that Shakira experiences towards the love that has taken hold of her, that loving the one she has fallen for is inevitable as the falling of the rain. The tone of the song creates a feeling of lacking agency which seemingly contrasts a great deal with Shakira’s persona as a liberated ‘She Wolf’ which she will develop more later in her career, but aligns with ways in which her lyrics seem to show that her agency disintegrates when faced with falling in love.

‘¿Dónde están Los Ladrones?’ would mark Shakira’s final entirely Spanish language project, and widening her international appeal by beginning to compose and record songs both in Spanish and English for her 2001 follow-up ‘Laundry Service’ would serve to be the defining action in consolidating Shakira as a crossover star. After Laundry Service included songs in both English and Spanish, Shakira would release ‘Fijación Oral, Vol. 1’ and ‘Oral Fixation, Vol. 2’ in 2005, companion English and Spanish projects which would yield some of Shakira’s most enduring hits including La Tortura with Alejandro Sanz and Hips Don’t Lie with Wyclef Jean. Although many songs would exist across both projects in Spanish and English respectively, many of the project's singles would be exempted from this treatment, including the one I wish to investigate, Don’t Bother. In terms of unique lyrics, Don’t Bother stands out even amongst the work of Shakira. The song takes the perspective of Shakira lamenting her inadequacies being compared to the woman her lover has chosen instead of her. Even amongst lyrics such as ‘she’s the greatest cook and she’s fat free, fat free, fat free, fat free’ the song’s middle eight stands out.

For you, I'd give up all I own

And move to a communist country

If you came with me, of course

And I'd file my nails, so they don't hurt you

And lose those pounds, and learn about football

If it made you stay

But you won't

But you won't

Here we find Shakira’s second explicit reference to football in her lyrics, echoing the sentiment discussed earlier in Antologia. The lyrical voice Shakira creates is once again self-sacrificing and willing to give up aspects of herself in order to please the lover she desires. She is willing to change herself to accommodate a lover, further increasing the feeling that love is an inevitable force that takes away her agency.

The most well-known meeting between football and Shakira came in 2010 when Shakira was tapped to be the artist behind the official song of the Fifa World Cup of that year. Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) would go on to sell 15 million copies worldwide and become one of Shakira’s most internationally well-known songs. The song would also become incredibly influential in the personal life of Shakira since it was on the set of its music video that Shakira would meet football Gerard Pique, her long-term romantic partner and eventual father of her two children. Shakira mentioned in interviews that she wasn’t a football fan upon meeting him, but her attraction to Pique led her to learn about it to be able to support him. Love and football became inextricably linked in the life of Shakira, just as they had been linked in her lyrics years before she would meet Pique. Furthermore, in 2014, Shakira would relocate permanently to Barcelona to support Pique’s career and their growing family. While this is not necessarily ‘giving up all I own and moving to a communist country”, it does render the words of Don’t Bother’s middle-eight strangely prophetic. 

Waka Waka would not be Shakira’s final flirtation with football in her lyrics though, since four years later she would once again lend her voice to the World Cup, this time in the form of the rerelease of her single Dare (La La La) with the words changed to be about the World Cup.

Feel how the planet, become one

Beats like a drum to the same rhythm

Hear the whistle, kick the ball

The entire world soars like an eagle

In Rio we play, like we dance

Although not exactly a detailed play-by-play, it would be remiss to say that Shakira doesn’t offer some explanation of football in these lyrics. You do ‘hear the whistle’ and ‘kick the ball’ after all. In many ways, this feels like a full-circle moment when observed in the context of Shakira’s wider lyrical canon. She moves from ‘no entiendo de fútbol’ in Inevitable to a veritable authority on it, explaining it to the listener in Dare (Brazil). However, while it is a satisfying resolution from a lyrical standpoint, upon further inspection it seems to carry with it concerning undertones. Has the concept of football been a stand-in for Shakira sacrificing parts of herself in order to satisfy a male lover? In light of Don’t Bother especially, this feels like Shakira succumbing to a male lover's interests rather than them finding aspects about her they find attractive and loving her in spite of these perceived inadequacies.

And here ends the look through the lyrics of Shakira, although it must be stated that this discussion barely scratched the surface of the treasures to be found across the work of Colombia’s most valuable export since ground coffee. I hope that this article has inspired you to listen closely to the words of not just Shakira but all the music you listen to, since you may discover elaborate, tenuous throughlines in the work of your favorite artists too.