Billboard has a few details on Shakira’s new English-language album to follow-up her Laundry Service.
The Colombian singer will write or co-write her own material on the disc, due later this year. Alejandro Sanz will be featured on the album, and Sanz himself is working on English-language tracks that may become an album, when, in his words, “it’s ready.”
Exclusive Latin pop chantuese, Shakira is negotiating a million dollar deal to do four concerts in Egypt.
The singer had initially refused to perform there because of security fears, the same reason she gave to reject concerts in Tunisia, Morocco and Beirut but is now thinking twice.
A source close to Shakira said “She’s thinking it over very carefully. A million dollars is a lot of money to turn down.”
Shakira revealed that her success has allowed people to see her home country of Colombia as a cosmopolitan, cultural nation, not a haven for drug lords and guerrillas.
As she puts it, there are people who “still think we move around on horses or donkeys.” She explained “We’ve been having a very musical decade. It’s a very small country, but very rich in folklore and culture and artistic talent.”
“I’m proud of people like Carlos Vives and Juanes. In a way, they’re ambassadors of what Colombians really are.”
Meanwhile, according to informants, Shakira was shaking her behind so much during her song ‘Fool’ at the Miami arena last week that her leather pants split.
“She finished the song and then ran off the stage” a informant revealed. Then later at a post-concert party at Ibiza, she caused a “near riot” when her breast popped out of her shirt as she danced atop a booth.
“The crowd went crazy” the informant said. “The fire marshals were called and a police escort had to get Shakira out of there.”
The leather-and-wristband look Shakira sported in her ‘Objection (Tango)’ video sure excited many of her fans. It also thrilled the doll department at Mattel, which will immortalize the jalapeno-hot Latin performer with her own doll in March.
A spokesperson for her merchandising company said the nearly foot-tall Shakira doll will be cast in her “rock ‘n’ roll look” with curly, free-flowing hair, a black form-fitting top with straps, black leather pants embroidered with red roses, and boots. She will also be wearing rings, bracelets and studded leather armbands.
The toy giant chose the singer because of her multicultural appeal and will market the doll internationally, a spokesperson said. If the Shakira doll is a success, Mattel may launch another one in time for next Christmas.
A website reports that Shakira was actually initially surprised to hear comparisons to Britney Spears in both the US and the UK. The reason why she was first taken aback at the Britney comparisons was because it’s something that hasn’t happened to her in Columbia.
“It’s funny. You know, my fellow Latin people understand me little by little with each album. They don’t compare me to Britney, at all” the beautiful ‘Objection (Tango)’ vocalistress said.
“They’d be like, ‘What? Britney?!’ Nothing wrong with Britney. She’s a great artist and very beautiful, but I was pretty surprised to be compared to her.”
Shakira spoke with the MGN about her decision to use boyfriend Antonio de la Rua, who is the son of a former Argentine president, as her boyfriend in the ‘Underneath Your Clothes’ video.
The gorgeous siren said “It’s a very personal song and I wrote it for Antonio in the first place. The video needed some romantic scenes and I felt I was not able to do them with some model or actor I had only literally just shaken hands with.”
She continued “I don’t want to kiss a guy on the neck when I hardly know his name. So I told Antonio I needed his help. I told him he would be fine and in the end he had no choice.”
Shakira’s third single to be lifted from her debut English LP is ‘Objection (Tango)’ and is in heavy rotation in radio outlets all over America right now.
Causing quite a bit of a stir in Argentina, exotic pop queen Shakira Mebarak, 24, has had all copies of her English album ‘Laundry Service’ pulled from the Tower Records shops across the country. And why is that so you ask?
Well, see, the harsh move is in the disapproval of the featuring of the son of Argentina’s shamed president (Fernando de la Rua) in Shakira’s music video for her second English number entitled ‘Underneath Your Clothes’, the follow-up to her smash hit single ‘Whenever, Wherever’.
Antonio de la Rua is the blonde bombshell’s romantic partner who for a time played the role of advisor to his father. Currently, Antonio’s father is facing an investigation into the shooting of five protesters outside his residence as his term in office drew to a close last year.Sounding somewhat like Jewel on the ‘Underneath Your Clothes’ single, it is climbing Billboard charts and seems like it’s heavily requested everywhere. Cynics say that all the controversy surrounding the music video is just a mere publicity stunt.
Anyway, for all things Shakira, check out her official website at www.shakira.com, and on our Shakira section at shakira.pop-music.com.