the ambiguous fire of a singer on fire – Liberation

After a breakup, some compose desperate love letters, others install Tinder in the hope that the swipe will make them forget the lost being. Shakira preferred to compose a song to get revenge on her ex. The title titled BZRP Music Sessions #53, and written in collaboration with renowned Argentinian producer Bizarrap, was uploaded to YouTube on Thursday. The singer settles her accounts there with Gérard Piqué, the former Barça football player and father of her two children from whom she separated in June after suspicions of infidelity. The song, accompanied by a solid com operation, set the Internet ablaze, with 34 million plays in less than twenty-four hours, propelling the Latino singer to the top of trends on social networks and sparking a cascade of reactions.

“Women don’t cry anymore”

It was from a studio bathed in bluish light, where a keyboard and a few speakers serve as a backdrop, that the Colombian singer – who continues to set the dance floors ablaze with her voice (and her famous sway) – decided to carry out his musical revenge against the one who was his companion for twelve years, and this is not a serenade.

“A lot of gym, but also work your brain a little”, launches the singer of Waka Waka. Before resuming again, in an automotive and watchmaking metaphor directly aimed at the footballer’s new companion, the Spaniard Clara Chia, a public relations student from Barcelona. “You changed a Ferrari for a Twingo», “a Rolex for a Casio». The text is loaded with allusions to the blases of its two targets: «I only make music, sorry that it hurt you» (I’m just making music, sorry it splashes on you), she says first, before continuing: “He has the name of a good person, clearly it is not what it sounds like” (She goes by the name of a good person, which is clearly not the case).

Gradually, the silhouette of the singer, whose outfit recalls those of Destiny’s Child at the dawn of the 2000s, disappears in the video to make way for the pencil lines of a rotoscopic animation, borrowing its codes from the famous clip of Take on Me. And Shakira to launch in a last salvo: “You left me […] with the press at the door and a tax debt, you thought you were hurting me and you hardened me, women no longer cry, women charge. A feminist anthem perhaps, a rather commendable call to get up, but also an ambivalent title in which the singer unfortunately does not manage to get rid of a harsh criticism of the one who took her place.

Degrading comparisons

In terms of com, Shakira does not skimp on the means. Monday, along the beaches of the seaside resort of Mar del Plata, Argentina, a plane towed a banner in the sky with one of the verses of the song: “A wolf like me, not for a guy like you 11.01.23.” And if it is charming to think of this powerful wolf who finds her way back to the studios and her musical mojo, we can find it a shame that this rebirth takes place at the cost of degrading comparisons, which objectify the new companion of the footballer – and the singer herself. -same.

Shakira is obviously not the first mega star to use music to get revenge after a romantic disappointment. Already in 2016, Beyoncé told in her album Lemonade the phases she had gone through to rebuild herself and her couple after Jay-Z, her husband and the father of her children, cheated on her. In Queen B’s case, the exercise appears to have been cathartic. More than for Shakira? If it is already the third song that the Colombian singer devotes to her separation, after I congratulate you et Monotony, BZRP Music Sessions #53 is his first card.