Shakira’s master stroke

In January 2023, Shakira’s career was floundering. Her last full-length album had come out five years earlier, in 2017. El Dorado was rated 2.3 out of 5 on the Rate Your Music page. Between 2017 and 2023, she had just one hit and her popularity had sunk to an all-time low. Something had to be done. She released BZRP Music Sessions, Vol. 53, popularly known as Pa’ tipos como tú, with the Argentine producer Bizarrap. She won two Latin Grammy Awards for best song of the year and best pop song, and the track leaked into conversations from bars to political talk shows. It was not so much that the song was good but that people were fascinated by what it said about her relationship with her ex-partner, soccer star Gerard Piqué.

Today, Piqué is watching his businesses falter while the album Las mujeres ya no lloran will haunt him for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, things were looking up for Shakira. Bizarrap’s sessions ceased to be anecdotal and the Colombian pop sensation was cleared of tax fraud with €55 million ($64 million) returned to her account from the Spanish treasury. The 49-year-old’s career was rekindled and she is now at the peak of her commercial success with 12 concerts between September 18 and October 11 in Madrid, where 600,000 tickets will be sold, according to the promoters.

When Shakira’s concerts at the Iberdrola Music venue in Madrid were announced, with the idea of adding dates as demand for tickets grew, some from the music industry bet that she would not stop until she exceeded 10 tour dates just for the pleasure of surpassing Bad Bunny’s figure at the Metropolitano stadium. That bet was won. “Her artistic hunger is infinite. Shakira is very stubborn: a goal that she sets herself is a goal she achieves,” says Luis Merino, former director of the Los 40 Principales pop radio station in Spain.

Now retired, Merino recalls meeting Shakira many times. He recounts an episode that seemed decisive: “It was a dinner in Los Angeles with Gloria and Emilio Estefan, Tommy Mottola, head of Sony International, Shakira and her partner at the time, Antonio de la Rúa, and me. At one point we talked about whether she should sing in English or Spanish. Mottola suggested mixing the two languages, others at the table opted for English... She then interrupted and said, ‘Look, you know what’s going to happen? I’m going to do what I want.’ Everyone shut up.”

Over her 35 years in the industry, Shakira has reinvented herself multiple times. She has gone from pop-rock singer-songwriter to Latin diva and is currently enjoying an urban period. It might not be appropriate to her age but she’s rolled with it. There was of course a phase during her relationship with Piqué when she stepped back from the spotlight to bring up their two children.

That absence from the music scene has fueled her fans’ desire to see her live in what the Colombian concert promoter Catalina Amador calls “selling scarcity.” According to Amador, “Shakira generated hunger. She had not toured for years. When there is this absence and, suddenly, you present a tour, the demand is great and many tickets are sold. All this, obviously, has to be twinned with a new album on the market and with an aggressive marketing strategy.”

The numbers back Amador’s theory. Underway since February 2025, the Las mujeres ya no lloran tour is currently the highest-grossing tour of all time by a Latin artist, with ticket sales reaching €400 million ($450 million) by January. By the end of the tour, that figure will double. Despite the success of ticket sales in Madrid, some voices are critical of Shakira’s so-called “residency” in the Spanish capital, which is the only European city she will perform in.

The experienced Colombian cultural promoter and musicologist Gustavo “Chucky” García told EL PAÍS: “I don’t know if this is a residency or a real estate project for a shopping center with music. It’s like when you go to these shopping centers and enter a women’s shoe store and listen to lounge music. In a sportswear shop they play party music and in home stores they play songs by Julio Iglesias. I think Shakira’s concerts in Madrid are more about marketing than art.”

Shakira’s two-hour performance will be the high-point of the day, but a dozen other performances are scheduled by the likes of Amaia, Guitarricadelafuente, Juicy Bae and Stereo Madness, along with literary talks by Rosa Montero, Lydia Cacho and Lana Corujo, fashion exhibitions and gastronomic tastings. The use of Macondo Park for the event, which revolves around Latin American culture, is a reference to One Hundred Years of Solitude, by fellow Colombian Gabriel García Márquez.

The debate about which period represents the best of Shakira has been fueling conversations between critics and fans for years. Merino says, “I think the best of Shakira is Where Are the Thieves? (1998) and Servicio de lavandería (2001). Recently, she has been greatly influenced by the new Latin sound. It’s not what I like the most, but I admit that she adapts well to demand and I think she’s magnificent. In that sense, I don’t think she would allow herself to miss the boat. She’s always going to keep up. She’s always going to be at the forefront of what’s going on in the industry.”

In a letter published last August in EL PAÍS, Shakira expressed her desire to promote Latin culture during her stay in Madrid and justified her choice of city: “Something happens here that the world deserves to see: Latin immigration is celebrated. Spain has embraced it,” she said. Chucky García, however, says: “To me it is a circus, and like all circuses, it arrives, puts up the tents, sells out its tickets, people applaud the clowns and elephants, and then they pick everything up, leave, and nothing remains. And then there is the use of the word Macondo... Yes, it is a brand of Colombia, but it seems to me that in this case it is more of a postcard than something profound, something that leads you to think about the roots of things.”

Catalina Amador speaks from experience, since she attended a concert from the tour in Bogotá: “It was spectacular. For those of us who are in our forties and grew up with her songs, it is very special to relive them. I think it is also a performance for all audiences, including children. And reaching a multi-layered audience has a lot of merit.” There will be up to 12 days to check it out.

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