“I feel like a cat with more than nine lives,” Shakira told Billboard in September 2023. “Whenever I think I can’t get any better, I suddenly get a second wind. I’ve gone through several stages: denial, anger, pain, frustration, anger again, pain again. Now I’m in a survival stage. Like, just get your head above water. And it’s a reflection stage. And a stage of working very hard and when I have time with my children, really spend it with them.”
After a wildly productive period in which she heard her name called eight times at Univision’s Premios Juventud awards (a perfect nine was impossible because she was nominated twice in one category), she was honored at the Billboard‘s Latin Women in Music gala, and set 14 Guinness World Records on the strength of “BZRP Music Session #53,” Shakira became the first-ever South American recipient of the Video Vanguard Award at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards in September.
And now there’s a 21-foot-tall bronze statue of Shakira mid-dance in perpetuity along the waterfront of her hometown of Barranquilla, Colombia. The plaque below the artwork by Yino Márquez reads: “A heart that composes, hips that don’t lie, an unmatched talent, a voice that moves the masses and bare feet that march for the good of children and humanity.”
The honor came 22 years after she burst onto the English-language scene with 2001’s Laundry Service, featuring her infectious ode to making it work no matter what, “Whenever, Wherever.”
Which still sounds good—and very romantic—in theory.
But in practice, Shakira and Piqué’s partnership—she told 60 Minutes in 2020 that marriage “scares the s–t” out of her and she preferred the title of girlfriend or lover to wife—turned untenable at some point. And at least as far as the little bit that she’s hinted at is concerned, Piqué is the one whose behavior got him red-carded.
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