Maybe sometimes it takes a language barrier to truly appreciate a great pop album.
I’ll back up. In 2005, Columbian singer Shakira was hardly the most offensive figure in pop; in fact, the hits from her English-language breakthrough Laundry Service were perfectly palatable slices of Latin crossover pop, at a time when that subgenre was often patently ridiculous. (“She Bangs”, anyone?) Those singles still never did anything to suggest that I’d ever cherish a Shakira record — sometimes life takes you to unexpected places, because ten years later, here I am, touting the merits of Fijacion Oral, Vol. 1, Shakira’s return to Spanish-language music after Laundry.
And it is a delightful, textured, diverse pop record, and I’m convinced that I enjoy it as much as I do because I don’t speak Spanish and therefore don’t understand a word of it. Consider that Shakira released Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 in the same year; while the album wasn’t a one-for-one English-language translation of the first installment, the songs that did transfer over fell flat for me once I understood her. It’s not that her lyrics are particularly bad; it’s just that there’s a dusky magnetism to a lot of Fijacion‘s songs that simply retain an air of mystery, and writing everything out breaks the spell.
From the mystic, beguiling opener “En Tus Pupilas” to the passionate rasp of “Lo Imprescindible”, Shakira wails all over this thing — sounding beautifully untethered in her native tongue — over a bed of varied, genre-defying tracks. “Dia Especial” could be a mid-period Jewel song (think “Standing Still” era) with its mid-tempo shuffle and folksy chord changes; “Dia de Enero” is an endearing little acoustic ballad; Shakira digs into slow-burn torch songs with “La Pared” and “No”, B-52s-style rock with “Escondite Ingles”, reggaeton with “La Tortura”, and pumping Euro-disco with “Las de la Intuicion”.
And if you’re not a Spanish speaker, part of the joy of Shakira’s performance here is thrilling to her best vocal moments; her remarkably expressive voice sounds great here, conveying desperation when it cracks in the chorus of “La Pared”, devotion when it slips into a heady falsetto in “Dia de Enero”, or simple rock-chick cool when it powers through the chorus of “Escondite Ingles”.
Fijacion Oral is a top-flight pop album, through and through. Varied, melodic, and impeccably performed, it’s a Shakira album that you should own, which is a sentence you may not have thought you’d hear today.
Playlist Track: I’m going with “Escondite Ingles”, which is too gamely silly to dislike.
Drew's Album of the Day 