Protean musicality boosts Shakira’s latest album

SHAKIRA (WITH RIHANNA, BELOW). Her music has as much soul as it has chart-topping spectacle

Shakira’s self-titled 10th studio collection—which debuts at No. 2 on Billboard 200 this week (her highest charting album to date)—gathers seemingly disparate elements that coalesce into a coherent fusion of themes, genres, eloquent singing and radio-hooking melodies.

The 37-year-old Colombian singing sensation once told Rolling Stone, “I try not to put myself in a category and be the architect of my own ‘jail.’ I’m always experimenting.” It’s this openness that keeps her songs as vibrant as her colorful, navel-exposing outfits.

Two tracks that aptly demonstrate her protean musicality feature rhythm and blues princess Rihanna (“Can’t Remember To Forget You”) and country megastar Blake Shelton (“Medicine”) in genre-blurring tunes that are guaranteed to launch a thousand hits on Billboard’s Social 50 chart.

The reggae- and ska-fueled dance track, “Can’t Remember,” showcases vastly idiosyncratic singing styles that blend exceedingly well, while country-pop hybrid “Medicine” highlights Shakira and Shelton’s complementary voices as they render its ravishing harmonies and relentlessly catchy melody with hit-making brio.

Love’s complications

Shakira’s continually evolving sound engages as she fills her hum-worthy melodies with thoughts and emotions that either disturb or overwhelm her—and they’re mostly about love and its complications:

“Spotlight” tackles the downside of fame (“Some just want your money, or whatever they can take/ But, you are your own man/ You want me, not for what I make”), and “23” refers to the age of her boyfriend, Spanish football star Gerard Piqué, when she met him: “God knows I’m a good dancer/ My feet can move to the music He plays/ But, there were times I asked for an answer/ When He was acting in mysterious ways/ Then, you touched me like it was meant to be.”

Shakira doesn’t just share happy thoughts, however. In “You Don’t Care About Me,” about her less-than-amicable estrangement from an ex, she shares: “I have nothing left in my heart/ Should have never helped you become so powerful/ But, I saw a champion in your eyes.”

Joys of motherhood

The songstress is at her most vulnerable when she gushes about the joys of motherhood. In “The One Thing,” written for her 1-year-old son, Milan, she discloses: “I make mistakes, that much is clear/ And if I mess up everything someday/ I won’t hide my head in shame/ ‘Cause you’re the one that I got right.”

Cut in the mold of “Whenever, Wherever,” “Waka Waka” and “Hips Don’t Lie,” “Dare (La La La)” is the album’s requisite dance-floor scorcher that recalls the rousing energy of Ricky Martin’s “The Cup of Life” and the playfulness of Jennifer Lopez’s “Dance Again.”

But, Shakira’s power ballads, “Empire” and “Broken Record,” prove that her music has as much soul as it has chart-topping spectacle: Her evocative vocals smolder as the piano hovers in the background of “Empire,” while the guitar-driven “Broken Record” enables her to fill each line with moving vulnerability: “Your eyes take me to places I’ve never dreamed about/ Your voice is the only music I can’t do without!”