[0:00]With songs like Whenever, Wherever, Hips Don't Lie and Waka Waka, the Colombian singer Shakira is one of the world's biggest music stars. After a very public split from her long-term partner, she's returned to the stage for a new tour and she appears to be loving every minute of it, as our music correspondent Mark Savage has been finding out.
[0:25]Almost 25 years after her breakthrough hit, Shakira is on the biggest selling tour of 2025. Shakira! Shakira! And as fans gather in Miami's Hard Rock Stadium, behind the scenes, thousands of crystals are being sewn onto cat suits and guitars are being tuned. Ready for the moment Shakira enters the stadium with her Wolf pack of fans. And she's asked us to join her.
[0:56]And here we go. We're walking out into the stadium with Shakira. This is going to be amazing.
[1:14]Now, I have to ask, you came off stage an hour ago. Why are you here talking to us and not in bed with a tub of ice cream just flopping out? I don't know. I warn you. I might not make a lot of sense right now. Do you feel it physically? Yes, I do. I do. I do. Absolutely. It was really hot today and humid. This is a very physical show. I'm I'm dancing uh throughout the entire show. It is always challenging, you know, to put together a show of this size and to make it happen every night, it doesn't matter if you're sad or you had a bad day or if you're or if you're sick or if you're coughing. You just have to do your best and it miraculously make it happen.
[2:02]The tour comes after a turbulent couple of years for the star after a split from the father of her children, the Spanish footballer Gerard Piqué, and a move back to the United States. God knows that the past few years have have been easy for me and, but you know, life has its ways to reward us and and this is definitely one of them. But what I've learned is that a fall isn't the end, but the beginning of an even better journey. The music that I created these past couple of years have really helped me transform all that pain or the emotions into something more productive or more precious. And there's a beautiful moment in the show where you're singing Acrostica, which is dedicated to your two sons and then they appear on the video screens and sing next to you. How do you keep yourself together during that moment? Oh, I melt. My heart melts every time when I see them on that screen and I and I hear their little voices. They're just everything to me. They're my engine and the reason why I'm alive.
[3:12]In her home country of Colombia, Shakira has been a star since she was a teenager. But with her sight set on global domination, she quickly moved to the US and taught herself to speak English.
[3:26]I was only 19 years old and I moved to the US like many other Colombian immigrants who come to this country hoping to find an opportunity and I was one of them. I remember I was surrounded by Spanish English dictionaries because back in the day I didn't really have like Google, you know, or or to make songs. That's how I started writing my first songs and then I I got into poetry and started trying to understand how um how the English language works.
[4:08]What does it feel like being an immigrant in the US at the moment? Well, for an immigrant in the US is it it means living in constant fear and it's painful to see. I just hope that that they can be treated and that we all can be treated under principles of equity and freedom. Uh, those same principles that that shaped this nation.
[4:43]Can we do some quick fire questions just to finish with? What's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? I grab my phone, drink some water, and but lately, you know, I'm starting to meditate. What's harder? Raising two boys or running a crew of 150 people around the world? Definitely raising two boys. Yeah. And last of all, when will we see this tour in Europe? I guess you have to stay tuned and wait and see. We can't say dates yet, but we're close to announcing.
[5:34]Oh, she looks like such a good interview. She looks so much fun. Uh, you can watch a longer version of that interview on the I player. It's called Backstage with Shakira.
