Album of the week with Shakira: Polished Diamond Tears

Highlights: Album of the week with Shakira: Polished Diamond Tears. Latin pop queen Shakira is once again settling scores with ex-lover Gerard Piqué on her comeback album “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran” But is it still spectacular? Also: The debut of South African newcomer Tyla. It's hard to believe that that was in 2005. Five years later, Shakira had another global hit with the FIFA World Cup song "Waka Waka"

Latin pop queen Shakira is once again settling scores with ex-lover Gerard Piqué on her comeback album “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran”. But is it still spectacular? Also: The debut of South African newcomer Tyla.

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Musician Shakira

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Jaume de Laiguana / Sony Music

Album of the week:

Oh, you missed hearing a DJ or collaborator from the background admiringly calling out “Shakira, Shakira”. Just like Wyclef Jean (what does he actually do?) in “Hips Don't Lie”, one of the Colombian-Lebanese singer's biggest hits. It's hard to believe that that was in 2005. Five years later, Shakira had another global hit with the FIFA World Cup song "Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)". Afterwards, at least as far as charts were concerned, things became a little quieter around the “Queen of Latin Music,” in whose honor a statue was even erected in her Colombian hometown of Barranquilla.

Now, seven years after the last, Shakira's new album is being released. It is her reckoning with the former Spanish football star Gerard Piqué, with whom she had a relationship for more than a decade, which not only resulted in numerous gossip headlines, but also two sons that Shakira is now raising alone. The two megastars separated spectacularly in 2022, and since then the singer has wanted to reclaim her career, which she had put aside for love for many years. And of course she does this by artistically processing the entire Piqué drama, from the crush to the vendetta.

“Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran,” the women don’t cry anymore, is the name of her album. On the cover, she cries tears that turn into diamonds. This means two things: 1. Pain and grief make you harder, as hard as the hardest gemstone. 2. Pain and sadness can also be easily transformed into wealth. When the world gives you lemons, some people make sweet lemonade out of them, Beyoncé sang, Shakira would rather form diamonds.

This would all be completely fine and a successful gesture of revenge and self-empowerment if there were also numerous acoustic diamonds on “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran”. Some of the album's best songs have been known for over a year: the Weeknd-like farewell "Te Felicito" ("Good Luck") with Rauw Alejandro as well as the biting insulting duet with fellow colleague Karol G ("TQO"), who has also left ), the angry “Copa Vacía” (Empty Glass) and “Monotonía,” in which Shakira runs through the supermarket with a gaping wound in the area around her heart.

And of course also the ultimate, somewhat awkwardly titled poison arrow "Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53", which she produced together with the Argentinian DJ Bizarrap. The bitterly evil piece, aimed directly at Piqué, broke streaming records after its release in January 2023 and has so far been viewed more than 700 million times on YouTube alone. "I was too much for you and that's why you're with someone who's just like you," she says in Spanish, and: "I understood that it's not my fault when people criticize you / I do just music, I'm sorry if it splashes on you." Also nice: "You thought you were hurting me and making me harder / Women don't cry anymore, women make money." Here, my dear! What else was going to happen after that?

Shakira

Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran

Label: Epic International (Sony Music)

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In fact, not much left, apart from a few more songs of longing, sadness and revenge that are all too smoothly produced on danceable mainstream Latin pop. Shakira's heirs, who have become world-class in recent years (Bad Bunny, J Balvin, Rosaliá), can now do this better and more progressively. Shakira's talent, in addition to her singing, which is unfortunately often distorted by the autotune effect, has always been that she was able to force a wide variety of cultures and styles into a hip swing without it seeming like cheap appropriation: Afrobeat as well as western rock music, reggaeton as well as dancehall, EDM or hip-hop (“Puntería” is a duet with rapper Cardi B).

And so the two songs on “Mujeres,” which Shakira recorded together with Mexican bands in their traditional style, are the most interesting on the album. One of them, "El Jefe" (with Fuerza Regida), not only has the missing "Shakira, Shakira" call, it even leaves the intimate terrain of break-up poetry by addressing the precarious working and living conditions of many Latino single parents -Mothers opens. Unfortunately it was released as a single in September 2023.

But good: So that Shakira doesn't have to continue to suffer under a rich boss (Jefe) (and is not tempted to evade her taxes again), she should first turn her polished diamond tears into cash. A bit fucked up, but fair enough.

(3.0/10)

Listened briefly:

Christin Nichols – “Save yourself if you can”

“Everyone is afraid, nobody knows how to do it”: The refrain of the title track, which Christin Nichols recorded together with the rapper Fatoni, sums up the general feeling of fear nicely. In general, there is a lot more gripping on the second album by the Berlin-based actress and singer, who impressed with her solo debut “I'm Fine” two years ago. Still nothing is “fine” or “okay,” as a new song (with Julian Knoth from the Nerves) is called: Nichols struggles with the shift to the right and Rammstein sexism in the nervous-electronic “Bodycount,” capitulating to social media -Skills of the younger generation ("No Connection"), sets eternal self-doubt ("Tomorrow you want me") and antidepressant addiction ("Citalopram") to music in indie rock anthems with slogan refrains in English and German. Escapism like through a “Direct Flight to Seattle” and its nostalgic sound world always seems to be a possibility, but is quickly exposed as an illusion in the songs that are only superficially longing. No, Christin Nichols, now a well-known and popular figure in the Berlin concert and bar scene, has come to stay in the here and now. Fortunately. And for an anthemic “Five Minutes” at the end of her album, you believe that she might be able to lead you out of the night and fear. Because she knows how it works.

(8.0/10)

Waxahatchee – “Tiger’s Blood”

We already talked about the country boom last week and will do so again next week at the latest when Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter" is released. If all this is too much hype for you, you can have fun with the sixth album by Alabama songwriter Katie Crutchfield and her band Waxahatchee: It's hard to imagine a more beautiful and earthy Americana album these days, "Tigers Blood" is the kind of album , which were previously made by John Mellencamp or John Hiatt, and later by Lucinda Williams and Sheryl Crow. Today it is increasingly women who are conquering the heartland rock genre. Crutchfield, 35, does this with large musical gestures and small stories about the satisfaction that one can achieve after overcoming crises such as the pandemic and alcohol addiction in the company of a few good friends. The punk rock of the early Waxahatchee years sometimes still comes through ("Bored"), the sometimes sour-salty lyrics are still there, but now they only run through country rock nuggets like "Crowbar" or "365". Happy Woman Blues, revisited.

(8.2/10)

Tyla – “Tyla”

The pop scene has been waiting for an album that embeds the Amapiano trend in a mainstream album for a long time. 22-year-old singer Tyla from Johannesburg has managed to do just that. In 2023 she had a lascivious, erotic hit called “Water” with her mix of R&B, pop and that distinctively South African house rhythm, which went into the top ten in many countries, including the USA. Tyla is considered one of the discoveries of the season, pushed by massive TikTok presence and a major contract with Sony Music. She said in a recent interview that she always wished that there was an African pop star like Rihanna or Ariana Grande. Undoubtedly, Tyla, who also has the necessary looks, has what it takes to achieve this status. So far, however, the songs are still missing. The 13 songs on her album glitter beautifully, but lyrically a little too harmlessly in a steady, soon uniform flow of domesticated Amapiano beats. It only becomes interesting when there is actual variety beyond this rhythmic gimmick, for example in the ballad "Butterflies", which highlights Tyla's vocals, or in "Jump", where Afrobeat is mixed with the Jamaican-Caribbean influences of feature DJ Skillenbeng . However, the artist and her label did not find a follow-up hit for “Water”: for the album release, the track was remixed again with the popular US scandal rapper Travis Scott. A rather unusual feature choice, probably a concession to the US market, where Tyla's self-description as "colored", as is common in South Africa, recently raised eyebrows. With the world career, or at least the media omnipresence in the coming months, it will work out. But not because Tyla's music is an event. Not yet.

(5.0/10)