Shakira has had a rough few years. In 2022, she learned that her longtime partner Gerard Pique was cheating on her with Clara Chia Marti in their shared home in Barcelona. Shakira left Pique soon after, and he turned his side-chick into his official. Shakira left Barcelona and moved to Miami, but not before the Spanish tax authorities claimed she owed them millions. Shakira made a lot of noise about fighting until the bitter end, but she ended up settling and taking a suspended sentence. Presumably, she’s done with Spain completely now. There was some good news though – she released a diss track about Pique which became a huge crossover hit, and now she’s releasing a full album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran. Shakira chatted with the Times of London about leaving Pique and Spain, and her fresh start in Miami.

The pressure to sing in English back in the day: When she crossed over to the anglophone market in 2001, she says, “it was a true challenge for me to export my music in Spanish. There wasn’t so much receptivity from any gatekeepers in the industry and I felt sometimes that I was carrying a whole mountain on my shoulders, like Atlas. It was really hard to gain the respect of a very male-oriented industry that was also very prejudiced against Hispanic artists. All of that has changed. It’s a much more democratic world in which people make their own decisions about who they want to listen to.”

Her diss song, “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53”: “It helped me exorcise a lot of the demons that were tormenting me. And it felt good.” She won a Latin Grammy for the song, which was presented to her by Sergio Ramos, formerly of Real Madrid, the sworn enemies of Piqué’s Barcelona. That was mischievous of the organisers. “Or a cosmic joke,” she says with a smile.

What her sons think about her diss track: “They know that there’s only one way to live life and it’s accepting the pain. And each one of us has different ways of doing that.” For her it’s writing songs, and the same goes for Milan. “When his father and I were going through separation, he wrote two amazing songs, the kind that will bring you to tears.”

Putting her career on hold for Pique: “For a long time I put my career on hold, to be next to Gerard, so he could play football. There was a lot of sacrifice for love.”

She hangs out with the Beckhams in Miami: “I’ve talked to Victoria quite a few times since I arrived. We’re always talking about when I’m going to go watch a match and I know Milan wants to. We haven’t been able to meet up yet, but we’re on WhatsApp. I met David a long time ago, when he used to play for Real Madrid. That was before I started my relationship with one of the Barca players.”

She thinks Pique will regret his choices: She’s more forthcoming about Ultima (Last), a pretty piano ballad on which she sings: “Surely with time you’ll regret it/ And some day you’ll want to come back to my door.” Is that about…? “Voldemort, that one that shouldn’t be mentioned? It’s hopefully the last song that I will write about this, and to him.” It was the final song she wrote for the album. “I felt that there was still something there, stuck in my throat, and I needed to get it out. I played it to the marketing head at Sony and he started crying. I’d never seen a man cry in my studio before.”

Whether she learned of Pique’s affair through missing jam: Did she discover Piqué’s alleged infidelity via a pot of jam? It was claimed in the Spanish media that some of her jam disappeared from their home in Barcelona. She knew that Piqué and their children hated jam and the suggestion was that another woman had eaten it. It’s an outlandish story, but, well, this is Shakira. She claims not to know what I’m talking about, which seems unlikely, and insists it’s “not true”.

[From The Times]

“For a long time I put my career on hold, to be next to Gerard, so he could play football. There was a lot of sacrifice for love.” In 2022, Shakira gave a cover interview to Elle, where she went in further detail – in a raw way – of the sacrifices she made to live in Spain, to be with Pique, to put her career on hold to have children. While I know she has no regrets and she loves her sons very much, I’m just reminded yet again that Gerard Pique is a selfish douchebag and that women should always avoid these one-sided sacrifices. Pique got a global superstar to give up her career and be a stay-at-home mom without having to “sacrifice” anything himself. Then he cheated on her and bad-mouthed her to all of his friends and on and on. Normalize sending your exes to prison.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.