Rating:
Genre:
Latin
Release Date: 03/28/2006
Shakira delights in confounding expectations, and nowhere is that better seen than in how she secured a massive crossover audience on her own terms. She blended
Latin pop and American mainstream
pop, on both the
dance and
easy listening sides of the equation, on her 2001 breakthrough,
Laundry Service, but it was no crass cash grab -- she eased herself into the transition, balancing songs in Spanish and English on the record while crafting tunes in both languages to appeal to both longtime fans and new listeners. That set the stage for her magnum opus of 2005, the two-part
Fijación Oral, Vol. 1/
Oral Fixation, Vol. 2.
Vol. 1 was her first Spanish-language
Latin pop album since 1998 and the second was her first ever all-English crossover album, and if anybody was expecting the latter to be a continuation of
Laundry Service, consisting of nothing but sexy
dance tunes and power
ballads,
Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 will be a bit of a surprise: it's a deadly serious, ambitious
pop/rock album, most assuredly not frivolous
dance-pop. Even when the album dives into pulsating neo-
disco, it's in the form of a protest song in the closer,
"Timor," which isn't exactly by the numbers
pop. And that's a pretty good description of
Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 in general -- it's
pop, but it's unconventional. Even when she alludes to
pop divas past, whether it's with the foreboding
gospel choir on
"How Do You Do" that brings to mind
"Like a Prayer" or how she cribs from
Alanis Morissette on
"Illegal" ("You said you would love me until you died/And as far as I know you're still alive" is very close to
"You Oughta Know"),
Shakira twists these references to her own purposes, taking the music in unexpected directions. All these turns and detours lead to the same general destination: the sound is grandly theatrical, darkly sultry, and unapologetically lurid, a place where
Madonna and
U2 exist not as peers, but as collaborators. For if this album is anything, it's a global
pop/rock album with each of those modifiers carrying equal weight: these are
pop songs performed as
arena rock, belonging not to a single country but to the world as a whole. As such, the album touches on everything from the expected
Latin rhythms to glitzy Euro-
disco, trashy American
rock & roll, and stomping
Brit-pop, all punctuated by some stark confessionals, as
Shakira sings about everything from love to religion, stopping along the way to reveal that women with 24-inch waists may indeed be heartbroken. If some of these ideas don't necessarily gel, at least
Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 is alive with ambition and, more often than not,
Shakira winds up with music that is distinctive as both songs and recordings. And that means that
Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 is not only a markedly different album from
Fijación Oral, but from every other record in her catalog -- or, most importantly, from any other
pop album released during 2005. Other artists may be bigger than
Shakira while others may make more fully realized albums, but as of the mid-2000s no other
pop artist has attempted as much and achieved as much as
Shakira, as this often enthralling album proves. [
Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 was reissued four months after its original release with a slightly different sequencing and two new tracks: the not very good at all
"Hips Don't Lie," which features
Wyclef Jean (who shouts out "
Shakira" every 20 seconds or so), and a Spanglish version of
"La Tortura," a song from
Fijación Oral.]
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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