Shakira Fu!
Shakira
Oral Fixation, Vol. 2
(Epic)
Colombian pop princess unveils English-language counterpart to the summer’s FijacÃon.
For iTunes users, the process is routine: You pop a CD into your computer, the program opens, digs out the song titles, and you go about your piracy. Fairly inconsequential next to the Artist, Album, and Year categories is Genre. It’s a pesky little column you can ignore unless you cannot tolerate an “Unclassifiable” tag next to something like Aerosmith. It wasn’t totally unexpected to see “Latin” coincide with the rest of the tags with Shakira’s latest, Oral Fixation, Vol. 2, but it isn’t entirely accurate. Far from deliberating whether Green Day are either Alternative or Punk, but it’d be reasonable to assume Latin came up because Shakira is South American. Prior to 2001’s, *Laundry Service*, she never recorded in English.
True to the act of translating the album title for this release, Shakira has removed any reference to her heritage or ethnicity and recorded a fairly straightforward pop rock disc like Alanis Morrisette or Gwen Stefani trying to write and record U2 songs. If it were intended that way, Oral Fixation would be sublime commentary on how easy it is to replicate Anglo-American pop music; Shakira’s origins mean as much to these songs as the source of cocaine baggy to a New York runway model. But she wanders, perhaps inadvertently, beyond commentary to using English as the international, soulless medium it has become. Aiming for a universal market, she scores a direct hit in the middle of the road. One of her collaborators, on “Illegal,” is Mr. Cultural Sellout himself, Carlos Santana, who has spent the millennium watering down his signature licks for mass consumption. Shakira’s love songs blandly fade and the “why can’t we all get along?” opener “How Do You Do,” is blunted further by banality of the lyrics.
Most interesting is the final cut, “Timor,” mysteriously tacked onto the end. Unexpectedly addressing the separatist movement in eastern Indonesia, Shakira poignantly tosses aside the Westernized aspects of their culture (outright slamming MTV in the process), and praises the indigenous push against assimilation to keep Timorese society thriving. It’s something Shakira should take to heart.
— Steve Forstneger
This is not a good review of Shakira’s new album, Oral Fixation, volume 2. As a huge fan of Shakira, it digusts me to see someone calling Shakira’s music “bland” and her lyrics “banal.” This isn’t a good analysis of Shakira’s work. Shakira is one of the greatest artists, and her English lyrics are almost always better than those of other English-speaking artists. You can just imagine how her Spanish lyrics are! Shakira also records a wide variety of musical styles, so to say it is “bland” is way off. Fijacion Oral happens to be a bit more diverse, and Oral Fixation a bit more rock. I hope all people new to Shakira will not listen to this man’s review and do some research on Shakira for yourself.
Well I love the photos that shakira uses
on her DVDs im a real big fan of hers
i love the music she sings
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WELL, SHAKIRA IS MORE THAN MERCHANDISING, SHAKIRA IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST LATIN ARTIST IN THE WORLD, EVER. ORAL FIXATION 2 IS AS FAR, THE BEST JOB IN HER CAREER, AND I KNOW ALL ABOUT HER, TRUST ME, SHAKIRA ROCKS.
I think the review is right on- I just watched her Hips don’t Lie video- it is interesting to watch the commercialization and assimilation of “Africa” in her videos. In La Tortura she paints herself black and gyrates. It feels false to me, sorry. Congratualtions on super global stardom! Fame surely is her goal and she does it well.