Shakira's Clashing and Gnashing Cross-Over Fusion of Cultures, Sounds, Emotions, and Influences
Written: Jun 11 '02 (Updated Jun 11 '02)
Product Rating:
Pros: Talented musician who fuses widespread styles and influences
Cons: Should stick to doing albums in spanish
The Bottom Line: I love Shakira's exciting musical style, her vibrant voice, and her refreshing lyrics, but I don't care for the english translations on this CD.
mrkstvns's Full Review: Laundry Service by Shakira
Before I go any further, let me state my bias right up front and for the record. I don't like "cross-over" albums. Never have, never will. I'm a firm believer that every language has its own distinct sound and feel and flavor and that no translation, no matter how good or how polished, will ever be quite as good as the language for which a song was originally composed. Opera fans get the point and routinely reject every "translated" opera out there as the mutants they are. I wish rock fans would too...
Let's get one more thing straight right off the bat, shall we? Shakira is a rocker, not a substanceless teeny bopper pop star. In terms of sound, Shakira's music is closest to some of the great alternative rock groups of the 1990s. While the most common parallel that you hear is to Alanis Morissette, it's also the most unfortunate. Sure, Shakira's vocals have a startlingly similar tone, but that's the absolute limit to which you can take the comparison. Shakira's music is more complex than that of Alanis Morissette, with more varied themes and more disparate influences melded into a harmonious whole. Shakira's music is more mature in viewpoint and more positive in outlook. It's just plain better music. But let's get back to the more useful comparisons, shall we?
Sounds and Influences on Laundry Service
There are a lot of legitimate comparisons that can be made to Shakira's work. I've heard people say that some of the songs sound almost like Tears for Fear, or the Cranberries, or even Tracy Chapman (listen to Fool on this CD and tell me you don't hear Tracy Chapman...). Shakira herself claims to be influenced by Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, but I don't really hear it in her music.
When I listen to Shakira, I hear quite a range of influences, but I think that her work is more in synch with rockers like Alejandra Guzman than just about anything else. That was most true on albums like Donde Estan los Ladrones, which lacked the pop polish of Laundry Service.
A lot of people say that songs like Underneath Your Clothes sound like Celine Dion, and I suppose they do, but I wonder if some of that polish isn't simply the influences of Emilio Estefan and his wife Gloria Estefan (who helped Shakira translate lyrics for this CD).
Shakira has always been an artist who takes pride in and responsibility for her own work. She writes the lyrics, writes the music, and even produces her own CDs (although I wonder about Laundry Service, which Shakira claims to have produced, but that bears Emilio Estefan's name as "Executive Producer".
Heavy Hitters on Laundry Service Whenever Wherever is a powerful hit, no doubt about it, but as powerful as the sound comes off in English, it was just ten times better when it was Ojos Asi on her Donde Estan los Ladrones? album! The arabic influences still work all the magic of Ali Baba or Aladdin, or a thousand and one nights, but compared to the spanish, the english lyrics sound less insistent to me, less emotive, less vital. Yeah, great hit -- probably would be even in Croat, I don't know, but I do know it can be even better than this version...
I'm glad that Shakira included the Spanish versions of a couple of these translations on this CD so that audiences who really understand the music of language can experience the songs in their original language and with the added impact of lyrics that truly match up with the music. Listen to Suerte and I think you'll agree that it kicks butt over Whenever Wherever!
I think Rules is a great hit, no matter what language you speak! I love the hard-hitting opening drum solo with the insistently pounding bass that chimes right in on queue. The lyrics really work some magic here, exploring the way two people merge as one: Use your eyes, only to look at me. Use your mouth, only to kiss my lips. You can laugh, only to laugh with me. You can cry, only to cry with me... Shakira has really done bang-up job in polishing her english skills too -- I can't spot any trace of latina accent here -- sounds like a born and bred American pop tune to me!
A lot of people seem to like the upbeat Ready for the Good Times, and it is one heck of an infectious powerhouse hit. There's a lot of stuff going on in this complex tune, and I like the pounding drum beat that permeates the whole tune.
I know that Underneath Your Clothes has become an enormous hit for Shakira, but I don't really care for it for purely personal reasons. It calls to mind painful memories of an all-too-long night at the bar outside la Posada del Mar on Isla Mujeres. The bar was great, with 2 for 1 Dos Equis long necks coming my way all night as I laid back in one of the many hammocks strung under the palapa of the main bar. The pain came from having to listen to this God-awful tape by Club 69 of Let Me Be Your Underwear, the most horrible song since the Chipmunks remake of Peter Frampton's I'm In You.
I listened to I Want to Be Your Underwear (and "Take the Jeans Off!") 48 times in one evening. When I finally caught the bartender's eye and asked him to play another tape, he informed me that Club 69 was the only thing they had. I cried myself to sleep...whereupon sweet dreams of 2 for 1 Leon Negras at the Loncheria clouded out even the pain of Let Me Be Your Underwear. Ever since, I've had an irrational aversion to all songs dealing with underwear, and by association, anything that might be underneath your clothes. I just don't want to go there...
Tale of the Tracks...
Here's what you get for you music buck,13 tracks...almost 50 minutes of great music. (Note: I bought my copy in Mexico; copies sold in the U.S. present the songs in a completely different order).
1. Suerte 2. Underneath Your Clothes 3. Te Aviso, Te Anuncio (Tango) 4. Que Me Quedes Tu 5. Rules 6. The One 7. Ready for the Good Times 8. Fool 9. Te Dejo Madrid 10. Poem to a Horse 11. Eyes Like Yours 12. Whenever, Wherever 13. Objection (Tango)
About Shakira
Shakira has a heck of lot of musical experience for such a young woman (she's only 25). Her first album was recorded when she was 14. A lot has been made of the fact that she stands out from the crowded rock world in that her music incorporates arab influences (she is half Lebanese and speaks arabic as her second language).
There's been a lot of inaccurate information about Shakira showing up not just on the web, but even in the mainstream media. I heard one radio DJ say that Donde Estan Los Ladrones? was Shakira's second album. Not so! Just to set the record straight, here are Shakira's albums that I am aware of:
Magia (1991)
Peligro (1993)
Pies Descalzos (1995)
Donde Estan los Ladrones? (1998)
MTV Unplugged (2000)
Laundry Service (2001)
(If you know of titles I missed, please leave a comment or send me an email -- I love having folks set the record straight!)
Bottom Line
This is an outstanding album -- probably the best "cross over" album I've ever heard from a non-native speaker, but I still don't recommend this album to purists. This album is decidedly not as good as either Donde Estan los Ladrones? or Pies Descalzos.
If this were the first Shakira album I'd ever heard, I'd be rating it as a 5-star album. Compared to other pop and rock artists, she's head and shoulders above the crowd in terms of raw talent. I'm rating this as 4 stars though because compared to Shakira's earlier works, it's weaker, less interesting, too overpolished, and too pandering to a mass market.
A child prodigy who wrote her first song at age eight, Shakira is a blond-locked Colombian who speaks three languages and loves only in Spanish. She i...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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