Looks Like Epic Figured Out A Way To Make The Shakira Record America-Friendly

Yesterday I mentioned that the new Shakira album She Wolf was irresistible to me because of its twisty, dancey strangeness, although figuring out a way to fit its globally minded disco into the American market was clearly seen as a tough task by her label—after “She Wolf” stalled on the Hot 100 it was summarily given a pushed-back release date, which is now slated for sometime next month. (Note that her promotional appearances on high-profile American TV shows—Dancing With The Stars, Saturday Night Live—are slated for this week.) However! If the new song from the soon-to-be-released American version of the album is any indication, Shakira’s label Epic is seriously going into Code Red mode when it comes to making this thing break both America and even. Ladies and gents, I give you “Give It Up To Me” by Shakira and Timbaland and Lil Wayne!

Well, I do like how this song retains the innate oddness of the album, and as “Timbaland tracks that are meant to save seemingly unsaleable albums” go, it’s certainly better than the track where he asks to visit M.I.A.’s teepee. But part of me feels like the Hail Mary pass that is this song is a) a bit too soon and b) can also be chalked up to a failure of pre-release imagination on the part of Epic’s promo people. Yes, She Wolf is a bit of an outlier on the radio right now, but could one not argue that a large chunk of its target demographic is made up of the type of people who would get together for the purposes of dancing at radio-station-sponsored disco nights on the weekends? Head out to those parties, slip “Spy” or even “She Wolf” into the playlists, and see what happens. I am so sure that when the similarly dinky-sounding “Hips Don’t Lie” was initially presented to the suits at Sony, there was much confusion—and that song would go on to be one of the Colombian singer’s biggest hits in the States. Shakira feat. Lil Wayne and Timbaland – Give It Up To Me [YouTube via Shallow Nation] Earlier: Shakira’s New Album Needs To Be Let Out Of Its Cage