Shakira Gets Ready To Pounce On The Global Dance Floor

noah | June 29, 2009 9:30 am

ARTIST: Shakira TITLE: “Loba” WEB DEBUT: June 29, 2009 ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: Shakira’s first single since her 2007 ringtone-ready Beyonce collab “Beautiful Liar” sounds at first like a straight-up disco jam, with an aggressively thumpy bass and string flourishes. But the way the singer’s normally husky vocals are tweaked on the chorus sound like she’s beamed in a backup singer from Planet J-Pop in order to complete her task of reinventing herself. The English-language version of the track–called “She Wolf–is set to debut sometime within the next 36 hours, and a few preliminary reports on that version hint at the reason behind the stylistic shift: the lyrics on the song’s chorus are about the wolf inside a woman needing to be let out. (So it’s a cloaking device?) The track is actually surprisingly hot, perhaps because of all these collisions, although I’m wondering if its straight-up disco revivalism will result in it being exiled from pop radio. WHERE TO HEAR IT: Give it a spin on YouTube before it gets taken down:

Shakira – Loba **nueva cancion** [YouTube]
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