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| Shakira - Oral Fixation / Fijacion Oral | | (And Why It's All About The Money) | | 01 February 2006 | | The second half of Shakira's double album is released in the UK later this month, but being an impatient so-and-so, we imported a copy from Spain, and it is rather good. However, taking the work as a whole, it is not the masterpiece it could have been. To understand why, you need look no further than the profile of the artist which appeared some months ago in The Economist.
It wasn't so much what the article (entitled The Crossover Queen) said, but that it was published at all - over the years, we've learnt that if The Economist are talking about it, there's money involved!
In a way, the problem is that from which almost all double-albums suffer - it could probably have been whittled-down to a single CD without loosing very much.
In this case, however, things are complicated by the fact that the two halves are aimed largely at two different markets - because while the first album is (almost) all Spanish, the second is (slightly-more) exclusively English. This provided Sony Music with a moral justification for the two albums, but it was also kinda convenient! By selling, and marketing, the two parts separately, Song have maximized their push into each sphere, while also reaping cross-over sales, and keeping the artist "on the radio" somewhere for far longer than would normally have been possible.
But there was an alternative - because, while there are 20-odd "good" songs here, there are only 10-or-so "great" ones; and looked at from the point of view of artistic credibility, this is the option we wish Shakira had taken, because those eleven-and-half tracks could have formed a second work of genius to rank alongside Donde Estan Los Ladrones, her 1998 release, which is so near-perfect that at times it has literally reduced us to tears.
We feel passionately about this! The line between "rather good" and "masterpiece" is one rarely crossed, and for one artist to do so twice (and before the age of thirty!) would have been something special. Shakira could have achieved this, but she didn't... because in the music industry, it is always all about the money...
So, for what it's worth, here is the album we would have released:
How Do You Do
La Tortura
Illegal
Don't Bother
La Pared
En Tus Pupilas
Day And The Time
Las de L'Intuicion
No
Costume Makes The Clown
Timor
La Pared (acoustica) |
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The point is we are all connected... through love... through loneliness... through one lamentable lapse in judgment!
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