Shakira’s comeback with a ‘cathartic’ album

Colombian pop singer Shakira, who had become an icon of pop music in the 1990s and 2000s is back after more than a decade with a new album, which packs a punch gathered from her life-experience. She was married to Spanish football star, Gerard Pique, had two children, went through separation and divorce, hauled up for tax evasion, given suspended three-year sentence, and made to pay $8 million.

The 47-year-old calls her new album, “Las Mujeres Ya No Malaran”, which translated means, “Women No Longer Cry”, a concept album, and in many ways a catharsis through music.

She told American news agency, Associated Press, “It was really important for me to be able to express, in and through these songs, so many life experiences and to find catharsis, you know, and to be able to find the therapeutic effects of writing and see myself back in the studio.”

That is honest talk. Artists, especially successful ones, rarely dare to admit that their creative output is the outcome of painful experiences. Of course, there is greater authenticity because it comes from inner turmoil. She called the album a concept album because it included a range of genres, from Afro-beat, reggaeton, Mexican regionals and rock. And in Shakira’s words concept is not an abstract thing.

It boils down to something hard, perceptible, and tangible. She says, “Nobody chooses to go through the kind of life experiences that I went through when I was writing and creating this album, you know, life gives you lemons. So what do you do? Make lemonade. So I made songs.”

It is not easy to be Shakira because it is no walk in the park to sustain a two-decade successful singing career and figure prominently on the popularity charts of songs, and come back after a decade with a meaningful, heartfelt bouquet of songs.

Pop music moves and changes at a psychedelic pace, and Shakira now faces competition from younger singers who were mere toddlers or were not even born when she set out, like Adele, Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. Shakira would not be singing the kind of songs that her younger contemporaries are winning applause for.

The audience has changed. A new generation of fans with different experience, different taste and different demand now fill the music halls and stadia. But Shakira is likely to hold out because she is being herself instead of trying to please the new audience. The artist has to offer her or his own experience and truth.

But it not a cry of woman who has had to face trauma and hurdles. She says that it is the celebration of resilience of women. And she explains it graphically: “It doesn’t talk about only pain; it talks about triumph. And that’s why these tears are not tears made of resentment, anger, or just sadness, but tears of triumph and tears of self-recognition and finding confidence within.”

And it is a different kind of declaration for feminism. It is a declaration women power to regenerate human beings and civilization. Shakira spells this out in resounding words: “Women are natural multitaskers. We can do everything. We can really survive wars and rebuild cities after they are destroyed.”

It is this spirit of determination that gives the new album of Shakira its life-affirming resonance. The Western world in a state of drift where civilisational ideals have disappeared, and there is ennui if not despair. So it is left to artists to revive strength and hope anchored in emotions and sensibility. Politics and business have pushed emotions and feelings to the margins, which has done immense harm to people. Artists like Shakira show that it is time to retrieve the lost feelings.