10 Februrary 2006 - Of course, I have "Oral Fixation, Vol 2" but I was re-adding her music onto my computer using iTunes and read some of the reviews. One really ranked her on her dancing in the "La Tortura" video. People didn't like what he said and I watched it and I had to agree that her dancing was really freaky. She really needs a correographer coach to teach her how to dance in her videos.
13 July 2005 - I bought "Fijación Oral vol. 1" when it was released. This album did not get much playing time in the car but it is in my Nomads "playing now list". That automatically means "Top 20". They did a really good design job of the DVD. For example, when you play the album, you get the lyrics on the screen. This is a first for me. I think all of the DualDisc's should be done this way. This album is much better from the point that it isn't all "silly songs". "Laundry Service" was a mixed bag. Many songs were silly and some not. I thought the Pepsi tango advertisement, which was based on Objection, was a classic. Another classic advertisment was where she is late and sings into her cell phone. I don't remember the cell phone but I remember her singing into it and then walking on stage and being given a microphone.
Her voice is maturing but she stills needs some work because it can get shrill at times and listening bothers me. A silly song is "Moscas en la casa". Who wants to hear someone sing about "flies in the house". It sounds good but the lyrics are silly. A shrill song is "Escondite Inglés". I just grimace when she does the "uno, dos" sequence. Her voice in "En Tus Pupilas" has a nasal sound. Instead of nasal Country think nasal Columbian. I think the nasal sound is something she should get rid of or at least reduce. Where her voice is changing, if this is any indication, I think she will have a very listenable mature voice. Some go scratchy such as Ana Gabriel did. You have to come to the conclusion that Ana over did it.
I was accidentally introduced to the music of Shakira. Since she was first and was directly responsible for my buying the CDs of the other artists, she will alway have the top spot. I was looking thru the new country albums and just happened to see the "latin mix 2" album. I purchased it and started listening to it. It seems like most of the artists recorded for Sony Music Latin. At any rate, I liked the sound of Sharkira's song "Ciego Sordomuda". I'm not a fan of rock music and Shakira is consider Latin Rock. I can listen to rock but not for a long time When I kept listening to Shakira, my friends all noticed. There were several songs of Shakira that would start my feet to thumping. The song "Ojos Asi" from the album " MTV Unplugged" does this the most. It is an interesting mix because she was born in Columbia to a father of Arabic descent. The music is very unique. The album "¿Dónde están los ladrones?" went platinum 23x around the world. That means she sold 2.3 million albums. I don't speak Spanish yet but I added one to the list.
I was looking around in one of the local bookstores by the name of Hastings. In the new book rack was "Shakira : Woman Full of Grace". If you click the link, you will find yourself at Amazon Book's Ximena Diego page where you have your choice of English or español for the language. Reading about how Shakira broke down many barriers that she encountered on her way to playing her music was really interesting. You can read about how her first two albums, which you probably couldn't find outside of Columbia, didn't do very well. She was basically on Sony Latin's black list because of her lack of cooperation on the first two albums. Then, she met Sr. Luis Fernando Ochoa and the album they produced changed the face of Latin music for ever. The album was released in Columbia and the story has it that a wider southern hemisphere distribution was considered if the sales reached 50,000 albums. This was achived in 15 days. The distribution was occuring whether Sony did it or not. One of the side effects of air travel is that albums such as "Pies descalzos" could start appearing in nearby countries as traveler's arrive home. When "Donde están los ladrones?" was released, she had fans all over the world waiting for the record stores to open their doors for business. Some stores open their doors at midnight in order to cope with first day sales that totaled 300,000 albums. All of her fans found listening to her music exciting and understanding the Spanish lyrics was not a requirement.
Shakira has my immediate interest because of the imminent release of her first crossover album, which some people have being released 6 November 2001. For example, the local Circuit City had the street date as 6 November but they are not getting any copies. One of the other music stores were sure they were getting 3 or 4 but didn't have a clue as to when. There was an anouncement on the Spanish version of MSN - YupiMSN. I ended up purchasing it on Tuesday at the local Best Buy store.
If you can burn your own CD, you can create a special Shakira CD with "Donde están los ladrones" and "Pies descalzos" on it. The combination amounts to 84+ minutes. Since the current CDs only hold 80 minutes, I had to remove 2 songs. Selecting the two probably required two hours of listening. It wasn't an easy choice.
Some links to Shakira web pages are as follows: Shakira On Line; Shakira's World. I had never seen Shakira's Nokia ad and there was a copy on "Shakira On Line". She is late for a performance and starts singing into her cellphone and then walks on stage using a microphone. I thought it was a really awesome concept. Her current Pepsi ad is funny. You have this store clerk dancing a tango with her and then it turns into a life size cutout image. He is kind of embarassed when he sees people watching him dance.
My tastes for música latina have moved on. As I understand more of her Spanish, the subjects of her songs are less interesting. Hopefully, the songs on her next album will be more meaningful. Don´t get me wrong, I will buy it even if they aren´t.