Tears, screams, knives, and fire are just some of what you can expect when Shakira comes to town.
Orlando’s Camping World Stadium was packed June 4 to witness the Colombian superstar travel through time with a setlist spanning 30 years of the music that’s made her one of the best-selling artists of all time.
She started in the present with “La Fuerte” from last year’s Las Mujeres Ya No Lloren (Women No Longer Cry), the album that brought her out on a world tour of the same name. The mid-song costume change, pulsing dance beats and jaw-dropping graphics on a massive screen the width of a football field set the tone for the next two hours.
With a catalogue stretching across 10 albums (give or take), Shakira often melded the old and new for a fresh take on fan favorites. If you didn’t like it, well, there was plenty to watch instead, from Shakira’s famous hip shaking to spouts of fire on stage.
While she’s strayed farther from her pop rock roots with every album, longtime favorites resurface — along with her guitar — in her live repertoire. Even on a stadium stage in front of about 45,000 fans, “Inevitable” took me back to the Shakira I watched on Latin MTV in the late 90s. 
I’ll pause here to say I knew I stood out as a middle-aged white man wearing a metal shirt in a sea of teen girls, gay couples, matching girls-night-out clusters and Hispanic fans. But I grew up in Bolivia just before Shakira rocketed to global fame with her English crossover album Laundry Service in 2001. While Shakira doesn’t even make my Spotify Wrapped today, her first couple albums were in heavy rotation throughout high school and into college. Pair that nostalgia with the love songs I heard while dating my future wife and I hope I could be forgiven for getting a little misty-eyed.
Within that context, “Antología” was the best performance of the night. Seated and surrounded with a simple acoustic set-up, Shakira delivered a beautiful rendition of a song that pairs best with young love and the quiet solitude of 2 am. (Trust me on this one.)
Other flawless classics included “Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos” and “Ojos Así,” the latter delivered with a long belly dancing intro made extra spicy with knives. New to me but worth a mention was the “Addicted to You/Loca” mashup that had everyone chanting “loca, loca, loca.”
And as a fan of her more heartfelt pieces, new tracks like the slow ballad “Ultima” put me enough in mind of “Sombra de Tí” to appreciate her new material.
While Shakira is the centerpiece of the whole production, I was also incredibly impressed by the talent of her live band and the flawless choreography of her dancers. Special shoutout to the dancers who made a human bicycle for Shakira to ride during “Copa vacía / La bicicleta / La tortura.”
Bottom line: even if you’re the faintest of fans and hardly know Shakira beyond the Super Bowl and Zootopia, the production alone is worth the ticket. If you are a fan, don’t wait another seven years for her to hit the road again.
Setlist:
La fuerte
GIRL LIKE ME
Las de la intuición / Estoy aquí
Empire / Inevitable
Te felicito / TQG
Don’t Bother
Acróstico
Copa vacía / La bicicleta / La tortura
Hips Don’t Lie
Chantaje
Monotonía
Addicted to You / Loca
Soltera
Última
Ojos así
Pies descalzos, sueños blancos
Antología
Underneath Your Clothes
Objection (Tango)
Whenever, Wherever
Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)
She Wolf
BZRP Music Sessions #53
