Originally appeared on E! Online
Shakira is ready for her comeback after heartbreak, and that's the deal, my dear.
Ahead of the upcoming release of her first studio album in seven years, the "Whenever, Wherever" singer is reflecting on her musical journey and how it was affected by her relationship to former pro-soccer player Gerard Piqué, from whom she split in 2022.
"For a long time I put my career on hold, to be next to Gerard, so he could play football," Shakira told the Times of London newspaper in an interview posted March 16. "There was a lot of sacrifice for love."
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The Grammy winner and her ex, with whom she shares sons Milan, 11, and Sasha, 9, announced their split in June 2022 after 11 years together and five months before the star athlete retired from professional soccer. Since then, she has released several new singles, most of which will be featured on her upcoming album, "Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran." The record, whose title translates in English to "Women No Longer Cry," is set to drop March 22.
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"There were so many pieces of my life that crumbled in front of my eyes and I had to rebuild myself in a way, picking up the bones from the floor and putting them all together," Shakira told the Times. "And the glue that kept it all together was music."
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While the "Hips Don't Lie" singer continuously released new songs during her relationship with Piqué, she has not toured since 2018. She has, however, performed sporadic gigs in recent years, including a joint 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show with Jennifer Lopez and a sizzling solo performance at the 2023 MTV VMAs.
In her new music, Shakira expresses her emotions about her breakup from Piqué. The singer told the Times that her new album represents "the transformation of pain into creativity, frustration into productivity, anger into passion, vulnerability into resilience."
Case in point: Track "BZRP Music Session #53," released as a single in January 2023—two weeks before the soccer star and Clara Chia Marti made their romance Instagram official—contains the Spanish lyrics, translated to English: "A she-wolf like me isn't for guys like you, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh / For guys like you, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh / I was out of your league, that's why you're / With someone just like you, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh."
As for how her and Piqué's sons feel about the song, Shakira told the Times, "They know that there's only one way to live life and it's accepting the pain. And each one of us has different ways of doing that."
And their son is following in his mother's footsteps as he processes his parents' breakup. "When his father and I were going through separation, he wrote two amazing songs," Shakira told the newspaper, "the kind that will bring you to tears."
