Music

Shakira turns to look out of the the window of her plush hotel suite. Outside, the bright winter sky gives way to a crisp, sunny Hyde Park. Now Shakira, I say, about that lyric on your new album, ‘Oral Fixation Vol 2’. The one in the chorus of a very sad song called ‘Your Embrace’ that goes, ‘Without you this place looks like London/It rains every day.’ Do you see any rain today Shakira? ‘Ha!’ squeals the 29-year-old Colombian, ‘you’re making me look bad!’ London, I tell her, could say the very same about her. So, do you see any rain? ‘No,’ she grins. ‘I do not.’

But let’s look on the positive side of Shakira’s precipitation slur. The belly-dancing pop superstar’s new album is the sister of her 2005 Spanish-language album, ‘Fijacion Oral Vol 1’, which shifted in excess of 3 million copies, hitting the Top 10 across Europe and the Americas. The English-language ‘Oral Fixation Vol 2’ is expected to exceed those sales. That means millions of households could be put off visiting London by Shakira’s erroneous weather report. Just think of the extra space she’s creating for us on the tube.

Whether the UK itself will fall for the charms of ‘Oral Fixation’ is not so clear.

Shakira’s breakthrough album, ‘Laundry Service’, stuck around in the upper reaches of the UK charts for most of 2002, largely thanks to the buoyant pan-pipe pop of her hit ‘Whenever, Wherever’ (famous for its ‘lucky how my breasts are small and humble’ line). And yet the follow-up, ‘Fijacion Oral’, limped to just 180 in the UK album chart last June. The fact it was sung entirely in Spanish perhaps didn’t help its chances here, but the album still reached Number One in Germany and Italy.

Even now that she’s returned with her first English-language album since ‘Laundry Service’, UK radio is proving mightily resistant to Shakira’s charms, with first single ‘Don’t Bother’ struggling for crucial exposure.

It’s an enormous shame, because ‘Don’t Bother’ is a great pop single from a great pop album.

Shakira has often been labelled the Latin Britney, but she’s far closer to being a Latin Gwen Stefani mixed with a Latin Alanis Morissette (with, if we’re honest, the sometime vocal honk of a Latin Cher). Executively produced by Rick ‘Midas touch’ Rubin, ‘Fixation Oral’ is an album of vibrant grown-up pop that takes in rifftastic guitars, Latin disco, teary ballads and, in the gloriously jaunty ‘Hey You’, the greatest Britpop song that Blur never made.

Lyrically too, this is superior stuff.

Written by Shakira, the album opens with a strident power-ballad that articulately questions the existence of our various Gods (it’s been banned in the Middle East) and closes with a Europop stomp reminding us of the problems in East Timor. In between, she skilfully deals with love, pain and insecurity with a surprising openness for a woman who’s been famous since she was 13, has sold 29 million albums and is dating Antonio de la Rua, the son of former Argentine president Fernando de la Rua.

‘It’s like if you’re washing your underwear,’ she explains brightly. ‘You’re not really thinking about how you’re going to use it or who’s going to see it. You just do what you have to do. I have to wash my underwear and I had to write these lyrics. Unfortunately I don’t always have the opportunity to see a therapist, but I’ve always got a paper and pencil to put these things down. The songs come out of that.’

In ‘Don’t Bother’, Shakira frets about losing her partner to a rather specific sounding other woman. Given that Shakira and de la Rua are the Posh ’n’ Becks of South America, isn’t it hard to be quite that open?

'I know people will assume that one’s true, but it’s not,’ she says. ‘All of these songs are very personal, because they are either my own past experiences, present experiences or future experiences I don’t ever want to have. “Don’t Bother” reflects a latent fear that lives in every woman’s heart of being scorned for another woman who’s taller, prettier or fitter.’

Well, we’ll let her have the taller bit – Shakira is a doll-like 5’1”. That makes her the same height as Kylie, and Shakira seems to share Ms Minogue’s ability to keep a few toes on the ground despite the megastar success.

The Colombian tells me she was surprised David Beckham was so nice to her when she met him recently because ‘he’s so famous!’ and swears she’s never uttered the diva mantra, ‘Do you know who I am?’. ‘The only eccentricity I have is a monster inside who likes to do things better than right. I’m compulsive about perfection. But I’m trying to fight that monster,’ she chirrups. ‘The good thing about getting closer to your thirties is that you start feeling a little more comfortable in your own skin. Today, for example, I wear much less make-up than four years ago.’

She’s also beginning to look forward to settling down and starting a family with de la Rua, whom she clearly adores. But what happens to their domestic bliss when Argentina play Colombia at football? Who does she cheer for? ‘I don’t watch soccer,’ she says evasively. ‘It’s like a form of war with 22 men in underpants.’ There’s nothing for it but to repeat the question. ‘I think you have an evil component,’ she says, glancing over her shoulder and lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘But Colombia, of course.’