SHAKIRA: Sony's Great New Hope

"We’re going for broke." So says Tommy Mottola, Sony Music Chief, when asked about the future of his latest protégé, Latin American songbird Shakira, on the eve of the release of her first English language record. At 23, she has already been called the Latin Alanis Morissette, and has been heralded as one of the most original and emotional singer-songwriters to emerge from Latin America in years. But comparisons don’t seem apt. "What originally broke her here in our continent is her originality," says Jorge Ferradas of Sony Argentina. "That she was so young and could compose songs like that and sing with personality and the influence of her different cultures (she is half Colombian, half-Lebanese) gave her a unique character." Of course it doesn’t hurt that she is gorgeous, with a sultriness that has only been enhanced by her torrid love affair with pin-up handsome Antonio de la Rúa, a 27-year-old lawyer – and son of Argentine president Fernando de la Rúa. Sony is hoping for an even greater success with the upcoming album than with her last, which sold 3.5 million copies. "People are sick of the pop pabulum," Mottola says. "People are anxious to have something to gravitate to." And in Shakira, he and many others believe they have found it.

Talk Magazine pages 114-117 and pg.152
By Chris Connely
Shakira Latin America's most talked about singer washes up on American shores this summer with the release of her first English-language record. But don't let the blond mane fool you: She's no pop tart. She's the real thing.
She is just 23, but already she has sold more than 8 million records, won a Grammy (and two Latin Grammys) and been profiled by Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. She has packed stadiums across her native South America with her gritty rock vocals and lay-it-bare lyrics, and in the process won the heart of the handsome son of the president of Argentina. Given her credentials it is perhaps not so surprising that, in the midst of recording her first English-language CD, Colombia pop star Shakira is taking her time... even if that leaves Sony Music chief Tommy Mottola biting his fingernails.
"Every time I talk to him, before saying hello (Mottola) asks me,'When are you done?'" Shakira says, laughing, during a lunch break at a South Beach restaurant. "I promised him that I give him this record before his birthday, as a birthday gift. Otherwise I have to get him something from Burdines or something." Mottola's birthday is July 14, which, as Shakira's manager Freddy DeMann points out, is well after her record will be needed; in fact her first single, possibly a tango-rock fusion, is due in stores June 26 (along with the all-important music video). "It's like Waiting for Godot," DeMann winces. "She is so friggin' slow."
But as DeMann and Mottola both know, Shakira's records have always been worth the wait-and better still, her English debut will be accompanied by her sultry new look. Reborn a blond after years as a brunette and clearly comfortable with her lissome figure. Shakira is not the same woman whose angry, love-torn words and delivery prompted critics to call her a Latin Alanis Morissette. Why? "LOVE, in capital letters," she says happily, eyes shining. "This is the first time I trust. We are on the same team. Unlike before, when it was a battle."
The man in question is Antonio de la Rúa, a 27-year-old lawyer-and son of Argentine president Fernando de la Rúa. For the Latin press it is as though Jenna Bush were dating on of the Backstreet Boys. The couple's every outhing together-from dinner with her parents to a steamy semiclad rendezvous on South Beach-has been chronicled, and though their glamorous lifestyle has raised some eyebrows, given the austerity of the current regime in Argentina, even President de la Rúa has come to terms with it. "Antonio," the president announced to his press corps last year, "se ha enamorado." ("Antonio has fallen in love")
All would be bliss, and pretty much is, but for Shakira's occasional bouts with jealousy. "I grew up in a very male-domineering environment," she says, "and I heard a lot of stories of men cheating with women and all that, so..." Also, Antonio's celebrity and dashing good looks make him a figure of attention: "Sixty Argentinean girls came over to him in the airport, because he is also a public figure in his country and he has got great charisma, too. So I asked him, 'Did they grab your ass?' And he is like, 'Yeah, one of them.'" She pauses, and then: "Oh, no!!!" Her anguished scream rockets around the restaurant. "But," she says, "those were little moments that you might feel insecure. Probably it doesn't show, because I am secure for certain things."
That confidence helps her resist the pressure to finish her album before she thinks it's ready. Looks aside, she's a singer-songwriter, not a pop princess. Since Shakira writes all her own material, melodies and lyrics, there's no way the label can push her record along by summoning the sort of designated tunesmith that Britney Spears or Ricky Martin can call on. "This has been a real agonizing labor of love," admits Mottola. "But I think it's gonna be worth it."
Mottola, of course, would love to get her image across to impressionable young Americans during the summertime, when school's out and there's plenty of time to listen to music and watch videos. Of Shakira's commercial potential Mottola says, "We've got a hole a mile wide. People are sick of the pop pabulum. People are really anxious to have something to gravitate to." What Shakira delivers are honest, musically eclectic songs that address the kind of alienation and turbulent emotion that the best rock has always trafficked in. "Skinny, ugly, messy/Clumsy, dumb, slow, fool, deranged" is how a lovelorn Shakira described herself on her last studio album, the one that showed her on its cover in a nondescript T-shirt, hands covered in dirt. "When the wrinkles cut through her skin/And cellulite invades her legs/You will come back from your hell," she wrote to an unfaithful lover in "Si Te Vas" ("If You Go"). Even in a society not known for giving props to powerful women, Shakira has become a mainstream success, a cultural icon "revered by whole families," says DeMann. "I always believed that women have rights," says Shakira, "and that there are some women that are intelligent enough to claim those rights. There are some others that are stupid enough not to. It is as cut-and dried as that. It doesn't matter if you are a woman or not; in this life, to earn your place you have to fight for it." And so she did, from the very beginning. Born Shakira Mebarak Ripoll, she grew up in the coastal city of Barranquilla, the only child of a Colombian mother and a Lebanese dad, a writer-jeweler with seven kids by a previous marriage. When Shakira was nine or so her mother brought her to Los Angeles for a few months. When they returned to Colombia, Shakira's life was transformed: Her parents' jewelry business had been sold. "I remember the day as if it was yesterday," she says. "And I cried and I cried. That's when I learned that things just come and go." Four years later, she talked her mother into taking her to the capital city of Bogotá, where she wound up singing for a Sony executive in a hotel lobby. A deal followed, but when the first two records didn't catch on, she was staring at has-been status. So at the age of 17 she asked her record company to leave her alone while she wrote and recorded her third album. "I talked to the company and I told them, 'I have the impression that this might be my last chance in this company-so let me do it my way. I want to see you guys in 6 months, okay?" she recalls. "Once I got into the studio I let the magic embrace me. Eveything I had inside me, I let it out." A self-professed "control freak." she oversaw production and the photo shoot for the cover of Pies descalzos (Bare Feet); as she recalls, "this record was a $30,000 budget record... that sold I don't know how many copies." About 3.5 million worldwide, as it turned out. After hearing the record's fresh, lively sound, Sony Discos, the company's Latin American arm, made her a priority across the continent. She broke big even in such hard-to-crack markets as Brazil, which usually prefers its talent homegrown. The two years of touring that followed made her a star. "Honestly, what originally broke her here in our continent is her originality," says Jorge Ferradas of Sony Argentina. "That she was so young and could compose songs like that and sing with personality and the influence of her different cultures gave her a unique character. I think that she has at this point a multitarget audience: a young audience that respects her for her lyrics and compositions and an even younger audience that identifies with her image and her beats and the way she sings. People as young as four or people in their thirties can listen to her."
Donde Están Los Ladrones? (Where are the thieves?)-it's titled inspired by the theft of a suitcase that contained her original set of lyrics for the album's songs-was more successfull still, prompting calls from Sony for an English-language version, calls that Shakira spurned. " I just wasn't ready," she explains.
Now she is, and she looks the part. Does her torrid romance have anything to do with that? "What do you think?" she says, with a laugh. "I feel more in contanct with my feminine side, my sexual side....But I see the physical aspect as an accessory. I don't see it as my true essence. I believe in myself as an artist, and I think that's the way I have to project myself. I love rock & roll; it's my passion. But I don't go out without makeup. I am a woman, you know."
Once her record's done, DeMann wants her to begin a "grassroots" campaign. "I want her to do what Alanis did," he says. "Go to stores, meet record company people, do radio stations-so that everyone knows what she's about." How big do they think she can be in America? According to Mottola, "We're going for broke." Until then, he's willing to wait.
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