Twenty years of the triumphal return from Shakira to music in Spanish with ‘oral fixation, vol. 1 ‘| Los40 Classic
Even his most founded detractors, if he has them, must recognize that one of Shakira’s qualities is that he has managed to reinvent themselves over the years. Of his first rock albums (four, in total), he decided in 2001 to start the millennium with an album in English, Laundry Service,who took advantage of the boom that Latin music – although sung in the language of Shakespeare – was charging worldwide. That work, which contained topics such as “Whenever, Wherever”, “Underneath Your Clothes” or “I leave you, Madrid” (one of the only two in Spanish), It reached number three on the United States lists and two in those of the United Kingdom.
Barranquilla’s was not going to stay after that irreplacement; especially because He was not willing to disappoint his Spanish and Latin America fans that with so much enthusiasm they had hosted their previous albums. Urban music also took away strongly. So that he devised the launch of one more album in Spanish, which he titled Oral fixation, vol. 1, 1and that he saw the light in June 2005. Precisely on the 6th of that month, twenty years ago, he debuted in number one of the best selling in Spain.
Actually, Oral fixation It was a project that encompassed two albums, volume 1 in Spanish and 2 (which would come out in November of that same year), in English. Author of her own songs, months before I had been composing almost compulsively – they raised four years between Laundry Service And this work, so it had time to do it – until you were With a wide repertoire of some sixty songs. He did not want to miss that fertile harvest, which is why he opted to launch two albums, similar in concept, but in different languages, the same year.
The expression “oral fixation” is not commonly used in the music industry, and certainly suggests erotic connotations. As he explained in Los40 at the time, it had to do with the fact that he has always lived “through the mouth, singing, kissing, speaking and eating chocolate, my weakness. It is also a term of psychoanalytic origin, which is reinforced with the cover of a mother who sucks her son.” And he added: “That will be my great project, to be a mother.” As revealed, after MANGOSETA TOUR concentrated its efforts on the creation of new themes, for which He rented a farm near Madrid, in Alcalá de Henares, where he lived four months and wrote issues such as “La Tortura”, “Those of Intuition” or “The Wall.”
Precisely those were the cuts that were most heard from this album, in which Shakira herself shared production work. “The torture”, first single, was a duo with Alejandro Sanz; An alliance of the largest artists in Spain and Colombia. I showed that Shakira was open to explore the reggaeton that would soon become the fashion sound. In “No” and “Special Day” collaborated with the Argentine Rock musician Gustavo Cerati (From the group Soda Stereo), who sadly died in 2014.
Described Oral fixation as his “more eclectic” album and away from Laundry Service. Love songs, such as “January day” abounded in him, which he composed in Buenos Aires just after acting before 50,000 people at the River Plate stadium, and was dedicated to his partner of the time, Antonio de la Rúa. The combination of universal feelings, such as love, with personal experiences, constituted the soul of the album, something that would be projected increasingly in subsequent releases.
Oral fixation, vol. 1, 1 He reached the fourth position in the Billboard list (United States), despite the fact that the main Spanish record chain, rhythm, refused to sell it claiming that with Laundry Service had betrayed the Spanish sector of the population; And the first in all Spanish -speaking countries, including, as we said, Spain. He gave him three numbers one in Los40. “Torture” was at the top four consecutive weeks in June 2005; “No”, a week in November; and “La Pared”, in December 2006. In between, the second volume would put into circulation, which in its reissue included “Hips Don’t Lie”, with Wyclef Jean, one of the greatest successes of pop of this century. In the United States alone, where he reached first place and four million copies were sold.
