Shakira with her Latin Grammys for Best Female Pop Performance AND Best Female Rock Performance In September of 1998, MTV’s Total Request Live made its debut and the Video Music Awards celebrated their 15th edition, the same month that Hole’s
Celebrity Skin, Marilyn Manson’s
Mechanical Animals and Jay-Z’s
Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life made their splash in the Billboard 200, all while Aerosmith’s
I Don’t Want to Miss A Thing debuted at number one in the Hot 100 (and remained for the entire month) and Rush Hour ruled the box office in its way to become a sleeper hit and a classic. Of course all of this was in the United States, all while thousands of miles below another pop culture phenomenon was taking place, I’m talking of course about the release of Shakira’s forth studio album and her magnum opus:
Donde Están Los Ladrones? (
Where Are the Thieves?), which turns 20 this week.
Long before
Ladrones, Shakira debuted at the tender age of 13 with the low budget 1991’s
Magia (
Magic), a collection of songs she wrote between the ages of 8 and 12 and some other tracks written by her producers. Two years later,
Peligro (
Danger) followed with even less input from the singer and songwriter. The experience of making those two albums was frustrating for Shakira, as she didn’t have any choice when it comes to production or sequencing of the tracks, and as a result the albums received a very tepid critical response and bombed, selling around 1000 copies each, with the latter being barely promoted at Shakira’s request, as she moved into a bigger label and started working on her second debut album:
Pies Descalzos (
Bare Feet), released in 1995. The song
¿Dónde Estás, Corazón? (
Where Are You Love?) was a hit when it was released as a single for a compilation album earlier in that year, which allowed Shakira to have the creative control she always wanted. The resulting album sold over five million copies worldwide (including over 500,000 in the US) and was praised by critics, who finally perceived that she fullfilled her potential as a performer and writer. After a successful international tour and a string of hits like
Estoy Aquí (
I’m Here) and
Antología (
Anthology), Shak was ready to move forward and conquer the world… however she need to find someone that could help her break into new markets.
Cue to Emilio Estefan.
The ICONIC album cover Emilio wasn’t just the husband of Gloria, but also the hottest producer of the Hispanic market at the time and the man responsible of launching the career of Enrique Iglesias and Thalía (and also Gloria, of course), and as such he was the most capable person to move Shakira into the next phase of her blossoming career: Worldwide domination. Shakira caught Emilio’s attention and immediately offered himself to work on her next album, but Shakira only agreed to if she was given full creative control of the record, conditions that Emilio accepted.
The title of the record was inspired by one of Shakira's trips to the capital of her native country Colombia. At the El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, after finishing her Tour Pies Descalzos, part of her luggage was stolen, including a briefcase that contained all the lyrics Shakira had been working on for the album, which forced her to work from scratch, not before she suffered from writer’s block, resulting from the impotence of the robbery itself: “
I came to the conclusion that there are all types of thieves. A thief is not just a person who takes a physical object that doesn't belong to him or her. There are thieves who steal feelings, space, time, dreams, and rights”.
The album cover, a picture of her with dirty hands and messy, colorful Medusa-esque braids, was inspired by the two interpretations of the album’s title: the literal “
Who are they? What are they looking for? Where are they?” about the thieves and the more figurative one about how no one is free of guilt: “
from that point of view, we all have stolen at one time or another, myself included. The dirty hands represent the shared guilt. No one is completely clean, in the end we are all accomplices”.
Ladrones is mostly a Pop record, with Rock en Español (an umbrella term to refer to several kinds of rock music made in Latin America from the 80s onwards) influences and elements of Disco, Mariachi and Middle Eastern music spread through the record. Sonically, it has been compared to her contemporaries of the time like Alanis Morissette and Meredith Brooks, with the only similarities being the fact that all of these singers weren’t exactly traditional pop stars and they played guitar-tinted pop songs.
The tracklist This is more apparent in the opening track and lead single
Ciega Sordomuda (
Blind, Deaf-Mute), which starts with Mariachi instrumentals before introducing a more standard dance loop and guitars as its background sounds, all while Shakira sings the iconic opening lines:
I run out of arguments and of methodology every time that in front of me your anatomy appears
A
sarcastic and humorous track about the consequences of falling in love,
Ciega was a huge hit when it was released, reaching number one in basically all of Latin America charts and the Billboard Hot Latin Tracks (a first for Shakira), aided by its
surreal music video; and was also a critical success, considered one of the
best Latin songs of the 90s and one of her signature songs. And with the iconic opening and the mariachi/rap bridge it’s easy to forget how iconic the chorus itself is:
Stupid, blind, deaf-mute, clumsy, useless and strong headed
It’s all I have been because of you I have became
A thing that doesn’t do anything else but loving you
I think of you night and day and I don’t know how to forget you
As a curiosity, a
full mariachi version was recorded as part of her
Unplugged album just two years later.
The second track is the rockier and angrier
Si Te Vas (
If You’re Gone), about how Shakira feels that her lover is planning to leave her for a “
witch, ugly piece of leather” and she warns him what might wait for him if she decides to leave him:
A new broom always sweeps clean then you will see the worn bristles
When wrinkles cut her skin and cellulite invades her legs
You will return from your hell with the tail between your horns imploring one more time
But by then I will be a million nights far away from this huge city, far away from you
Lyrics from the second and third track of the album The bipolarity continues with the third track and fifth single overall
Moscas en la Casa (
Flies in the House), a video-less tender acoustic-guitar-and-handdrum-driven ballad about the Shakira’s sadness suffered after her relationship fell apart and how she has to let herself go, while she continues to wait for him to come back. Inspired by her troubled
relationship with Puerto Rican actor Osvaldo Ríos, 16 years her senior, the heartbreaking yet simple lyrics details how are her days without her lover:
My days without you do not have any nights
If any of them appears it is useless to sleep
My days without you are a waste, the hours have no beginning or end
So short of breath
So full of nothing
Unusable scrap
Trash on the floor
Flies in the house
Shakira light up the mood a little bit with the forth track and single
No Creo (
I Don’t Believe) in which the dance loop, the unusual instrument (in this case an harmonica) and the rap bridge returns, as she sings about how she believes in nothing and nobody except her lover… ok, this one is a basically a reprise of
Ciega Sordomuda, and it doesn’t help that the video shares footage with
Ciega’s one (maybe both were shot back-to-back, who knows), but it still slaps:
I don’t believe in Venus or Mars
I don’t believe in Karl Marx
I don’t believe in Jean-Paul Sartre
I don’t believe in Brian Weiss
I only believe in your blue smile
In your crystal look, in the kisses that you give me
And no matter what they say
Only you know well who I am and that's why my heart is yours
Only you bend my reason and that's why wherever you want I go
Another global hit for Shakira, the song also became
the first single from her
Unplugged album just one year after its release as a single from
Ladrones.
Inevitable is the fifth track and third single overall, a song which had always remind me, musically speaking, to a
The Bends-era Radiohead track. The songs showcases Shakira exposing herself as an imperfect lover who might have cheated before, who doesn’t shower on Sundays and cries at least once a month (especially when it’s cold) and yet she still loves her guy so much that it’s willing to change everything and fix herself, everything just for him to come back:
I have always known that it’s best when it’s time to talk about two to start with oneself
You probably know the situation
Here everything is getting worse
But at least I’m still breathing
You don’t have to say it
You won’t come back
I know you so well
I will think about what to do with you later
Inevitable,
which was used alongside scenes of its music video for a Pepsi campaign, is more famous for being Shakira’s first foray into English singing, as a rewritten version
was performed in the Rosie O’Donnell show (followed by
an interview hosted by Gloria Estefan) and the ALMA Awards
as a duet with Melissa Etheridge. The songs was another top 5 hit of the album and have been performed in every tour ever since, albeit with
a small alteration since 2011: The lyric “
and I don’t know nothing about football (soccer)” is now “
and now I know about football (soccer)” as a tongue-in-cheek reference to her relationship with Gerard Piqué.
More lyrics! Even through it was only a radio single in a limited number of countries, the sixth track entered Shakira’s canon as her most controversial track:
Octavo Día (
Eight Day) is also the first track on the album that doesn’t deal with the subject of love, instead it revolves around the idea of God leaving us behind and what would happen with humanity afterwards. In some ways, it can be compared to Joan Osborne’s sole hit
One of Us, however the song’s social commentary leaves behind any comparison it can be made to the theme song to Joan of Arcadia.
The song begins with God creating Earth in six days and taking a break from everything in the eight day by going “
for a walk in outer space” just to come back and “
find everything in a hellish mess” which leads Him to became just “
another unemployed of the rate that is growing non-stop annually”, since then “
there are those who have seen him walking alone in the streets” while “
waiting patiently for someone with whom at least calm he can converse”. In the second verse, God “
in the absence of occupation or excessive loneliness” leaves us behind as He went to another place, and left us with no other choice than to “
worship Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton or Tarzan” as Shakira laments how our poor God “
does not appear in magazines, that he is not a model, or an artist or from a royal family”. The chorus delves into social critique as Shak casually mentions how, in the meantime of this godly mess, “
this world just keep spinning unable to being stopped; and here below, a few play us like chess pieces” while she’s “
not the kind of idiot that lets herself convince” from stuff that even a blind men can see.
The rock track, winner of the
Latin Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, gained more notoriety
during the Tour of the Mongoose (2002-2003), in which a very controversial background video played during the performance which showed Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush playing chess (with some of the musicians using Fidel Castro and Richard Nixon masks) just for players to later substitute the chess pieces for nuclear weapons, all while the Grim Reaper is controlling them like puppets… surprisingly she didn’t received the Dixie Chicks treatment and her career survived barely unscratched. In
a later statement Shakira mentioned her reasoning for such a controversial performance:
“I think that we see war as a virtual thing and we even get to believe that bombs fall on top of cardboard cutouts and stuff like that, they don't. They kill real people, real children, real mothers and millions of innocent people. I come from Colombia, which is a country that has been under the whip of violence for more than four decades, so I've seen the consequences of war and I've seen the psychological damage that it does in a society.
And I think that we're never ready for war. I just feel that there are always pacifist solutions, and I think that the leaders know the exit to the conflict, it's just that sometimes they don't want to use them, they just want to continue playing their little game of power. And I feel that us people have the responsibility and also the obligation to demand to our leaders to give us the pacifist solutions. […] I might be sounding like an old fashioned hippie, but I believe in pacifist revolutions and I think that we have to look for those solutions, otherwise there's no way to survive in this world. In the First World War, 13 million people were killed. In the Second World War, 40 million people were killed. I think that if a third war takes place, nothing is going to be left on the face of earth […] Not always do the governments represent their people. Not always do the governments make the right decisions, because the governments are controlled by just a few, and those few do not always represent faithfully the ideals of the people.”
Shakira performing Octavo Día at her MTV Unplugged concert In the seventh track,
Que Vuelvas (
To Come Back), Shakira let us breathe after such a heavy track as a pulsating and pounding bass line, another dance loop and a guitar accompaniment guides us through a journey in which Ms. Piqué wonders what would happen to her now that her lover, Ríos once again, left her. It’s very straightforward, sure, and kind of unambitious, but there’s a small element that elevates this deep cut above your average filler: the structure.
VERSE 1: It established the basics of the track right away.
PRE-CHORUS: It builds up to some anthemic chorus.
VERSE 2: Shakira blueballs us as another verse kicks instead, which shows us another perspective of the elements established in the first verse.
PRE-CHORUS: It’s here once again.
CHORUS: It finally appears and it kicks harder thanks to the buildup.
VERSE 3: The history of the previous verses continues to move forward.
CHORUS: Instead of just reprising the chorus, Shakira give us a surprise and changes the last bar to connect directly to the bridge.
BRIDGE: This short interlude is used by the narrator for catharsis, with some tension being liberated after so much angst.
CHORUS: Now the chorus comes back followed by a fade out which makes us wonder what’s going to happen next with our narrator… will she move forward? Will he come back to her arms?
Of course this reading might be too extra to some people, especially because the songs sounds suspiciously similar to
Estoy Aqui, but I can’t really stand the fact that this songs its
‘this’ close to be filler, especially given its placement in the album.
The following track is
Tú (
You) is Shak’s signature ballad and one of her most emotional and vocally demanding tracks. Although it begins as a declaration of unconditional love, it suddenly turns into another track begging her lover to not leave her again:
I give you my waist and my lips for when you want to kiss
I give you my madness and the few neurons that are left
My faded shoes, the diary in which I write
I give you my sighs, but don’t leave me again
Because you are my sunshine, the faith with which I live, the power of my voice, the feet that I use to walk
My love, you are my desire to laugh
I will not know how to say goodbye
Because I can never live without you
The self-penned track, issued as the second single of the album, reached number one in the Billboard Latin charts and several other Latin countries. Because of the difficulty of singing this track live, Shakira retired the full version
after the Tour of the Mongoose; but brought it back for her
set in Rock in Rio and the El Dorado World Tour,
albeit without the second verse.
The title track's lyrics The title track,
Dónde Están los Ladrones? (
Where Are the Thieves?), is second non-love song on the album. The harmonica comes back in the guitar-driven song which criticizes the politic and social reality in South American nations at the time of the album's release:
They have seen them out there, seen them on the rooftops, walking by Paris, condemning in the courts
With dusty nose, wearing a tie or blue jeans, you've seen them all on the covers, with nothing more to say
However, in a plot twist, Shakira points to finger toward herself in the chorus:
Where is the murderer?
Maybe there, rolling around the neighbor’s courtyard
and what will happen if it’s them?
And what will happen if it’s me
The one who plays this guitar or the one who is singing this song
Going by the song’s verses, everyone who had benefitted of the social inequity is part of the problem, it’s not enough to just point fingers. While 9 of the 11 tracks in the album are about love, the small glimpses we get from the Woke Shakira in this 2 sole tracks shows us that she’s far from being another average man-hater indie rock girl of the 90s like some of her peers… it’s not just the looks or the music, it’s how she portraits this sensibilities from different perspectives that makes her one of the greatest of the decade.
Unfortunately for us, we reached the closest this album has to a filler track:
Sombra de Ti (
Your Shadow), a subdued mid-tempo ballad in which Shakira feels how a previous relationship keeps haunting her. Lyrically speaking, this track is amazing, featuring some of the greatest metaphors and lyrics in the album (“
You must know that there are pieces of your mouth spread out all over this place and that I stumble every day with another old memory and a new gray story”) and the best opening bars in any heartache song ever (“
I'm going to let my guitar say everything I do not know how to say myself, or maybe I should wait for this jeering clock to finish planning my ending”) but… the sing-talking in the verses and the way she sings the chorus sort of takes me away from the track… I mean, any other Latin pop girl would murder for this song as her first single in any given album, but in this particular album and surrounded by so many amazing tracks it just falls somewhat flat for me.
The album closer: Ojos Así Fortunately, Shak decided to close the album with one of the greatest tracks of her career:
Ojos Así (
Eyes Like These), a middle eastern bop, which was released as the fifth single of the album. In the song, Shakira songs about how she has seen some amazing (“
a heaven without Sun”, “
a river made of salt”), unique (“
a Saint in prison”, “
an abandoned ship in the desert”) and weird (“
a woman passing under her camel”) stuff, and yet, she still hasn’t seen anything as striking as her man’s black eyes:
I ask Heaven only one thing, that in your eyes I can live
I have wandered around the entire world and I have come to tell you just one thing
I travelled from Bahrein to Beirut, I went from the North to the South Pole
and I never found eyes like those, like those that you have
The most impressive aspect of the track is the fact that Shakira actually sings in Arabic in several portions of the track, sometimes aided by an all-male chorus of course:
ربُ السماء , فيك رجائي (rb alsama' , fik rajayiy) (Lord of heaven, in you my hope)
في عينيها أرى حياتي (fi eayniha ‘araa hayati) (In his eyes I see my life)
آت ِ إليك من هذا الكون (at 'iilayk mn hdha alkun) (Coming to you from this universe
*)*أرجوك ربي .. لبي ندائي ('urjuk rabiy .. labi nidayiyun) (Please, My Lord)
The
Latin Grammy nominated, MTV VMA winning music video aided the song into becoming a huge hit in Latin America and arguably her signature 90s song. The track, which also won the Latin Grammy for
Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, actually has an (inferior) English version called
Eyes Like Yours, with
an unreleased video and everything, featured as the last track in 2002’s
Laundry Service. This English version helped the song to become a moderate hit in Europe and a smashing hit in Romania of all places.
The album
Dónde Están los Ladrones? was a huge critical hit when released in 1998: Rolling Stone
declared that it was ‘
hard to imagine a singer barely into her 20s having written and recorded such an inventive set of songs’, MTV
declared that Shakira ‘
represents the kind of eventuality for which Alanis Morissette, Bob Dylan and Beck are all precedents’, Sputnikmusic
called the album ‘
the gem of Shakira's discography, and one of the best Spanish pop releases of the past decade’ and the NPR put it above Taylor’s
Fearless, Mariah’s
Daydream, No Doubt’s
Tragic Kingdom and Fiona Apple’s
Tidal, among others, in their list of
150 Best Albums Made by Women.
Ladrones was nominated for a Grammy in the
Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album category, gave Shakira a Songwriter of the Year award in the BMI Latin Awards, a
World's Best Selling Latin Female Artist at the World Music Awards and 5 awards out of 8 nominations at the Premios Lo Nuestro
between 1999 and 2001 including Pop Album and Pop Female Artist.
Shakira with an ACTUAL Grammy After its release,
Ladrones was an immediate success in Latin America selling over a million copies a month after its release, however that success didn’t immediately translated elsewhere: in the United States it debuted at #141 in its second week of release (it didn’t sell enough to chart at first) and next week peaked at #131, although it spend a total of 11 weeks atop the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart; in Europe the album was a commercial disappointment and only reached above the top 75 in the Spain charts.
Ladrones is Shakira’s second best-selling album worldwide with over 10 million copies sold (below Laundry Service’s 15 millions), including around one million copies in the US (
being certified Platinum), which makes it the 9th best-selling Latin album in the country, one position below Shakira’s own
Fijación Oral Vol. 1.
In order to promote the album, Shakira performed across the world in different events and TV shows:
Miss Colombia 1999 in her native Colombia,
Con T de Tarde in Spain,
Laura in Peru,
Domingo Legal and
Domingão do Faustão in Brazil and
Premios Lo Nuestro and
Latin Grammys in the United States, among others, all in a one year period as she prepared her next release: Her
MTV Unplugged album.
Recorded in the Grand Ballroom in New York just ten months after the release of
Ladrones,
Unplugged was her first live album and basically served as an extension and complement of the
Ladrones era as 10 of the 11 tracks in the live release were from the
Ladrones album with
Si Te Vas being substituted with early single
Estoy Aquí. Unplugged was a huge hit (selling over a million copies worldwide) and was
a critical success in English-speaking markets, winning an actual Grammy, not a Latin Grammy, but a real Grammy for
Best Latin Pop Album, the third
Unplugged release to win a Grammy after Eric Clapton and Nirvana’s albums.
Her first of many live albums: MTV Unplugged After the release of
Unplugged in February 2000, Shakira embarked in her second international tour, Tour Anfibio (Amphibious Tour) to promote both the live album and
Ladrones. In The Tour Anfibio she performed for a two-month period (between March and May) a total of 21 concerts in 12 countries, including four dates in Argentine’s Luna Park (playing for almost 40,000 people), 3 dates in the United States (in San Diego’s Valley View Casino Center, Anaheim’s Honda Center and Miami’s Miami Arena, all with capacities for over 10,000 people) and a sole date in Colombia. Despite the short duration of the tour (it had less than one third of the dates of her previous tour), it was a commercial success.
After the inicial success of
Ladrones, Gloria Estefan tried to convince Shakira of releasing a English translated version of the album, offering to translate herself
Ojos Así to show it could be done (hence she was credited as a writer in the English version released later), which made Shakira start doing it herself… that was until she decided to better start anew and give herself some time to study the language, subsequently the sessions that were supposed to start in January of 1999 were cancelled and Shakira wouldn’t start working in the
Ladrones follow-up until the next year, writing English tracks with a "
dictionary in one hand and a thesaurus in the other"; the resulting album was
Laundry Service and we all know how that turned out and what happened afterward.
Shakira during her Anfibio Tour Donde Estan Los Ladrones? Is a fantastic listening from beginning to end, with every track offering something unique: either an iconic lyric, a moment of musical brilliance or a shocking combination of both, with the sudden realization that she was just 21 when the album was unleashed to the world;
Ladrones is very obviously a 90s album, but that’s not a detriment to how enjoyable and relatable it is up to this day, and how well and tightly produced it is. Despite lacking thematic cohesion, it doesn’t need it (not every album has to be
The Wall) to shock and awe with its sonically delicious palette of Latin rock pop sounds and poetic lyrics. Each track (with an obvious exception, a 7/10 for me) is at least a 9/10 with several tens in the middle.
As much as I love Shakira, I’ve always though it was a shame that this was her creative peak… not that she isn’t still great but none of her later albums have reached the same heights, although several of her subsequent tracks are obviously deserving of their acclaim and even some albums have come somewhat close of
Ladrones.
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