After a tour postponement, a canceled competition look and a present known as off on the final minute, Shakira lastly made it to Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium this week on a world tour behind 2024’s “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran.” The album, which examines Shakira’s breakup with the Spanish soccer participant Gerard Piqué, was the newest in a decades-long collection of hits for the 48-year-old pop star from Colombia; right here she performed to 2 capability crowds peppered with of us carrying fuzzy wolf ears impressed by her previous track “She Wolf.” My colleague Sergio Burstein lined Monday night time’s live performance en español, however I ventured to SoFi for Shakira’s second efficiency on Tuesday. Listed below are 10 highlights from the gig:
1. It’s been a giant summer season for the walk-out video. Like Morgan Wallen and Drake earlier than her, Shakira made opening the present a manufacturing unto itself, with a digicam following her from behind the scenes, pro-boxer-style, as she snaked via the viewers in futuristic shades and a silver jumpsuit to take her place onstage.
2. Flanked by the members of a co-ed dance crew, Shakira moved via loads of choreography Tuesday night time, none extra memorably than the very convincing robotic she did throughout a mash-up of “Las de la Intuición” and “Estoy Aquí.”
3. OK, one equally memorable little bit of motion: utilizing the arms, legs and backs of a number of male dancers as a residing stationary bike in “La Bicicleta.”
Shakira strikes via the gang.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Occasions)
4. As singles from Shakira’s “Oral Fixation, Vol. 2” LP, “Don’t Bother” was simply overshadowed 20 years in the past by the chart-topping juggernaut that was “Hips Don’t Lie.” At SoFi, although, I a lot most well-liked the previous, which she sang whereas jabbing at a glittery pink electrical guitar and which appeared like Courtney Love fronting Josie and the Pussycats.
5. Shakira carried out 2009’s “Men in This Town” for what seems to be the primary time ever on Monday — the results of a fan marketing campaign on social media that urged her to haul out the track concerning the sorry state of relationship in L.A. (“I went to look / From the Skybar to the Standard / Nothing took,” goes one brutal lyric.) She did the track once more Tuesday in a bedazzled Dodgers cap as a pair of video screens confirmed pictures of Matt Damon, whom she name-checks within the tune as one Angeleno not meant for her.
6. For a salsa-fied model of “Chantaje,” cameras adopted Shakira again to her dressing room, the place she sang — reside or prerecorded, it was arduous to inform — via a dressing up change and a little bit of hair zhuzhing earlier than she reemerged onstage. It’s a intelligent set piece, which is perhaps why Girl Gaga has the same one within the Mayhem Ball tour she dropped at the Kia Discussion board final week.
7. Shakira’s strongest vocal in all probability got here in “Última,” a stark piano ballad she’s mentioned would be the final track she ever writes about Piqué. (The track is “a cyst,” she instructed the New York Occasions, that required removing from her physique.) Right here she sang it whereas standing in a glittering mermaid robe that appeared to make it unattainable for her to maneuver — some sort of metaphor for the gilded cage of a star romance.
8. Fuzzy, jangly, evenly contemptuous: “Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos” is actually one of many nice ’90s rock songs.
9. Earlier than closing the present with “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” her Latin Grammy-winning 2023 collaboration with the Argentine producer Bizarrap, Shakira reached again to begin her encore with “She Wolf,” which when you consider it’s a fairly unlikely hit to have endured for a decade and a half: a creeping disco-rock thumper about lycanthropy — “Darling, it is no joke / This is lycanthropy,” she sings — that’s in some way develop into an anthem of self-empowerment. Indie sleaze lives.
10. Talking of throwbacks, the Black Eyed Peas opened Tuesday’s live performance with a tidy run via a few of their fondly remembered late-’00s stadium-rave jams, together with “I Gotta Feeling,” which Will.i.am launched with a bit of speech concerning the band’s love of L.A.’s Latino group. Mentioned the man recognized for his indefatigably cheerful music: “F— ICE.”
