“He had to come into my life because if he hadn’t, I would have gone crazy,” she told one interviewer in 1998, adding, “He gave me all of the security and the confidence I needed to undertake this project, and he made available the key people who I worked with, the collaborators on this album.” “She was this shy girl, but with a lot of energy, who wanted to do things.” Estefan ended up managing her as well, and despite rumors that they had differences during and after this time period, she praised Estefan for granting her autonomy while helping her navigate the industry, calling their partnership “destiny.” Still, Shakira wanted to maintain creative control, and reports allege that she signed a contract with Estefan ensuring she would have final approval of the album. “I remember she came in to see the studio, and she said, ‘How about you produce the whole album?’” And that’s what I loved - I love people who love music, so the connection was really strong,” Estefan told Remezcla. “To me, she was this shy girl, but with a lot of energy, who wanted to do things. Estefan adds, “I knew right away she was special - that this girl had something new and fresh for the market.” “I got 10 minutes with him, talking, and I figured out that he was the right person and I was at the right place,” Shakira says in a VH1 documentary that chronicles her success. But Estefan, the industry gatekeeper known for launching massive Latino acts like Thalia and his wife Gloria Estefan, represented a huge jump in her career and the possibility to break into a wider fanbase. Shakira was just coming off of the success of her third album Pies Descalzos, which had won her fans within Latin America. Shakira and Estefan met through Jairo Martínez, a promoter who managed the singer’s public relations for many years. “Believe it or not, but I’m driving to the studio right now and it feels like the first day when I went in to record with her,” he told Remezcla on a call recently. Two decades may have passed since the album dropped, but it doesn’t feel that way to Emilio Estefan, the legendary producer who oversaw Dónde Están los Ladrones? in its entirety. In interviews, many of Shakira’s collaborators shared their memories of making Dónde Están los Ladrones? and explained what the songs mean to them 20 years later. In honor of the album’s vicennial, Remezcla looks back at its significance - and at the untold stories that went into putting the album together. “This was the album that consolidated her sound and broke her in a big way.”
There had definitely been a lot of thought put into who it was going to appeal to, and yet the songs never sounded like anyone else but her,” remembered Leila Cobo, Billboard’s executive director of content and programming for Latin music and a journalist who covered Shakira’s early career. “The album had all of these different elements - one song had a little bit of ranchera in it, there was rock, there were ballads. More importantly, it set her up to transition into international stardom. Boasting hit after hit, the album soared to the top of Billboard’s Latin Albums chart for 11 weeks and won her two awards at the first-ever Latin Grammys in 2000. The songs established her as a deeply perceptive lyricist with a rocker’s renegade spirit, and positioned her as a dexterous pop star with the potential to transcend cultural borders. When it first debuted, it gave Shakira a chance to tell countless other stories - of her heartbreaks and heartaches, of feeling dumb and blind because of a boyfriend, of believing in love above Jean Paul Sartre and Brian Weiss. She later called the experience a “trauma,” and it stayed with her so much that when she did finally finish the album almost three years later, she named it after the thieves who had stolen her music.ĭónde Están los Ladrones ? celebrated its 20th anniversary last week. Shakira was completely distraught and grappled with writer’s block for months as she tried to come up with new material.
Unfortunately, the briefcase was stolen at Colombia’s El Dorado airport, and the work she’d done disappeared forever.
Shakira music origin full#
When the singer was preparing the follow-up to her 1995 breakthrough Pies Descalzos at age 19, she had filled a briefcase full of song lyrics. The story that most people know about Shakira’s seminal album Dónde Están los Ladrones? has become a kind of lore now.
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