I wanted to like this album. I really did. I tried to like "Loba," its first single, with some success. It's catchy, if overproduced. But now that the whole album's here, I have to say...I'm disappointed.
Where's the passion? Where are the haunting melodies? Where is the richly-layered Latin orchestration? Where are the intelligent lyrics?
I listen to Shakira, most of all, when I'm dealing with passions I can't handle and I need some sort of musical catharsis. (That or Rachmaninov, depending on whether I'm in a pop or classical mood.) Her soaring vocals and intense lyrics have often soothed me when nothing else could. So I really can't figure out what's going on with this album. Shakira, what gives? There's no emotion here. It wouldn't make me feel better if I had a papercut, let alone a broken heart.
There are a few bright spots. "Mon Amour" has more of the passion, wit, and emotional honesty that usually marks Shakira's songwriting, although she didn't write the lyrics (in general, she did a lot less of the songwriting for this album, whereas in the past, most of the material she's recorded has been her own). The vocals on the Arabic-influenced "Why Wait" are stunning. But the rest of the tracks are forgettable, both musically and lyrically.
She's trying to be a standard-issue American pop diva with this album, which is a move I find incomprehensible from an artist who usually has such a strong artistic confidence and sense of self. She's in every way better when she does her own thing in her own way. My hope is that, since this is a comeback album, she felt she needed an easy commercial success so that with her next album she'll be able to do her own thing again. And I really hope that thing involves a return to her Latin roots. She both writes and sings better in Spanish. But if her next album is more of the same...ugh.
