Shakira: Did It Again video

Three things Shakira’s new video contains

1) Shakira in a sauna
2) Shakira in a skimpy nightdress
3) Shakira dancing on a bed with a “hunk”

Amazingly, number 3 is our favourite bit.

Shakira – Did It Again

The most supple woman on the planet

I dropped into the Jools Holland studios to see Shakira (or Shakira Shakira, to give her full name) perform three tracks from her new album and one oldie-but-goodie.

I swear that the woman is genetically related to Elastigirl from The Incredibles. She is stretchy beyond belief. Watch the bit in She-Wolf where she sings the bridge while executing a perfect crab bend – around 0:58 into the video. It’s not normal.

Shakira – She Wolf (live)

The best bit about Jools Holland is watching how the stars off-duty. Before the show, there was a huge kerfuffle over Shakira’s necklace, which appeared to be caught in her hair. This demanded an instant jewellery swap, leading to the not-a-joke query “How many people does it take to change Shakira’s necklace?”

The answer is three: One to hold the spare chain, one to lift up Shakira’s hair, and one to operate the clasp. Plus Shakira, obviously.

Shakira – Hips Don’t Lie (live)

On Friday’s extended edition of the show, you’ll get to see two more tracks from She-Wolf – Why Wait and Gypsy, which both have a big Middle Eastern influence. The latter has another moment of lyrical genius from the daft-as-a-brush department.

I’m a gypsy
Are you coming with me?
I might steal your clothes
And wear them if they fit me

I guess all that bending must restrict the flow of blood to the brain.

Shakira in her pants

As single covers go, I’m giving this 9/10. Shakira looks great. Nice pants. But the wall could really have done with an undercoat – the old paintwork is showing through. Shoddy, shoddy, shoddy.

PS: I have just read this post on Marina and the Diamonds’ blog and now I feel dirty for even glancing at the above picture with my shameful man-eyes, never mind disseminating it across the internet like a small-scale, bedroom publising Larry Flynt.

On the plus side, I was right about the DIY.

Back once again with the renegade master*

Usually, when I disappear off on a sabattical**, nothing happens. Over the last week, however, there have been up to three (three!) big events on planet pop.

Here are they:

1. SHAKIRA BREAKS HER SPINE

During the filming of her new video, She-Wolf:

It’s all incredibly sexy, in a “there is no way I would let this woman into my house” sort of way. I would embed the clip here but the UK exclusive has been given to MSN, who operate the world’s most ugly video streaming site. Here is the link, Click on it if you dare.

2. MADONNA RELEASES MEDIOCRE SONG
Celebration is the title track of Madonna’s latest Greatest Hits album, and is almost certain to be her last number one for Warner Bros (unless Tinchy Stryder has something out the same week). Produced by Paul Oakenfold, it’s what old people would call a ‘banging club tune’ and the kids would call ‘a bit dated’.

It brilliantly recalls the summery vibes of Everybody and Holiday – and there’s a clever nod to Into The Groove in the lyrics – but the tune is a bit of an afterthought. In fact, when Jo Whiley played it on Radio One last week, a lot of texts came in saying it would sound better withough the vocals.

For those naysayers, here is the dub mix (which, it has to be said, is a vast improvement).

Madonna – Celebration (Paul Oakenfold Dub)
(

US readers can buy the track now on iTunes. Everyone else has to put up with a preview on Madonna.com until later this month.

3. SUGABABES DO A QUITE GOOD VIDEO

Like Monty Don, the Sugababes new single is a grower (yes, even though it is basically a club mix of Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy). When you watch the video, you will come to the realisation that, following a brief internal struggle, the group now belongs to Amelle Berrocca, or whatever her name is.

In the panoply of British girl band videos, it is a solid 7/10. But, because the song is so obviously a top-dollar US R&B production, you can’t get away from the niggling suspicion that Rihanna would have done it better.

At the very least, she would have spent another fiver on the choreographer.

Sugababes – Get Sexy

* “random blogger”
** attempt to drown myself in alcohol

Shakira – She-Wolf (English version)

*

When it comes to writing lyrics in English, Colombian pop star Shakira is equally touched by genius and madness.

Has there ever been a more passionate declaration of love than: “For you, I’d give up all I own and move to a communist country”? And has there ever been a more confusing come-on than: “Lucky that my breasts are small and humble / so you don’t confuse them with mountains”?**

The English-language version of the 32-year-old’s new single came out this morning, and it is – even by Shakira’s lofty standards – a literary classic. Here are the highlights:

“Darling its no joke, this is lycanthropy”

“To look at the single man, I’ve got on me a special radar,
And the fire department’s hotline in case I get in trouble later”

“Nocturnal creatures are not so prudent
The moon’s my teacher, and I’m her student”

“I’m starting to feel just a little abused, like a coffee machine in an office”

That last one may be the best lyric of all time, don’t you think?

There’s an MP3 of the song over at the Hard Candy blog, should you want to hear Shakira’s potty poetry in a disco setting.

* If this is the official art-work, I hope the proof-reader notices they’ve mis-spelled Shakira’s name
**These are rhetorical questions. There’s no need to send a letter.

Will radio play Shakira’s new single?

Shakira and Nelly Furtado’s teaser trailers

Two artists who are non-euphemistically “big in Latin America” are preparing new material for the summer, and trying out new ways of sparking our interest.

Shakira ‘Shakira’ Ripoll is hoping to build on the success of her Wyclef and Beyonce collaborations and score her first UK hit in 3 years with a single, She-Wolf, followed by an as-yet-untitled album in the autumn. For some reason, this is being promoted with a viral video of the hip-shaking Grammy winner eating people’s faces.

There’s no clip of the song – but Popjustice has heard it , and vouches for its quite good-ness.

Meanwhile, Nelly ‘I owe it all to Timbaland’ Furtado is about to unleash her first Spanish-language record (trans: about to have a flop album in the UK, where people who speak a second language are viewed with the same degree of suspicion as mothers who eat their own babies).

Here is her, rather less expensive, Youtube video:

While Shakira is trying something clever (it’s an attempt to establish a narrative theme for her lycanthropic project) Furtado’s trailer exists in a whole other dimension of crap. It’s literally a 30-second music clip set to a cheap animation – sort of like an over-ambitious iTunes preview.

If this is how singles are being promoted now, what can we expect to see next? An exclusive first look at the typeface for Vampire Weekend’s new record sleeve? A preview of the autotune settings Mr Hudson is using on his next album? Maybe Madonna could release her new single one note at a time, accompanied by a collectable magazine that builds up, week-by-week, into an exclusive partwork.

Actually. I’m copyrighting that last idea at the Post Office tomorrow.

The Discopop top 10 singles of 2007

If you don’t own these, you’re probably a paedophile.

1) Amerie – Gotta Work

An updated, improved version of One Thing, Gotta Work stomps all over the dancefloor like a giant in hotpants. Using a sample of Isaac Haye’s Hold On, I’m Coming, Amerie crafted a case study in melodic composition – there’s not a single wasted note across three minutes and eleven seconds. Why this didn’t get to number one, I’ll never know.
:: Watch it on youtube

——–

2) Robyn – With Every Heartbeat

“Still dying with every step I take, but I don’t look back,” sings Robyn as With Every Heartbeat opens. It’s the most emotionally honest, bitterly painful song of the year – if not all time. The bit where the string quartet kicks in will break your heart a thousand times over. Her acoustic performance of the song on Radio One probably drove several teenagers to poetry or that weird sobbing where you make a noise like Hannibal Lecter when you breathe in. But you can dance to it, too, which must turn school discos into a dangerous playground of tears and snot. Brilliant.
:: Watch it on youtube

——–

3) CSS – Let’s Make Love and Listen To Death From Above

The best drunken come-on of the year, Let’s Make Love sees Lovefoxxx making a stupid, Bridget Jones-style attempt to get a man into bed. The song doesn’t record whether or not she was successful, but I definitely would.

According to Wikipedia, the hook “is probably a reference to the Canadian band Death From Above 1979, as evidenced in the song’s video where band members are shown wearing elephant masks (a reference to the “elephant heads” on the cover of Death From Above 1979’s album You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine).” So now you know.
:: Watch it on youtube

——–

4) Rihanna – Umbrella

In which 19-year-old Robyn Rihanna Fenty transformed from a vaguely-interesting Barbadian R&B lady into a globe-straddling pop behemoth before our very eyes. This despite the fact her singing voice is more nasal than an anteater, and that the opening rap from Jay-Z is the very definition of “phoned in”. But this record is so amazingly catchy that it has changed the way we pronounce the word umbrella for the rest of all time.
:: Watch it on youtube

——–

5) Girls Aloud – Call The Shots

If Rihanna mangled her pronunciation of umbrella, Cheryl Tweedycole put the word “now” through a primeval torture device in Call The Shots. Seriously, it ends up being seventeen syllables long or something. But I love this song, and anyone who says they don’t love it too it is lying through their dirty mouth.
:: Watch it on youtube

——–

6) Groove Armada – Song 4 Mutya

Despite the lyrics, Mutya almost certainly doesn’t know all the words to Prince’s Hot Thing, but this pop song, full of meaty synths and New Order guitar lines, sounds exactly like the sort of thing the little purple man would have written for one of his filthy protegés in the mid-80s. The video is a crock of shit, though.
:: Watch it on youtube (but it’s probably best not to waste your time)

——–

7) Beyoncé and Shakira – Beautiful Liar

Two of pop’s shoutiest ladyfolk have a volume competition over a slinky, arabesque beat. The video contains several scenes of wiggling. It is altogether smashing.
:: Watch it on youtube

——–

8) Girls Aloud – Sexy! No, No, No…
Nadine has a “d-d-dirty mind”, she helpfully tells us in this hymn to sexual caution. Coincidentally, two years ago she used the lyrics of Biology to advertise her “dirty brain”. We, the public, demand more information about this inner pervert.
:: Watch it on youtube

——–

9) Siobhan Donaghy – Don’t Give It Up

It is a terrible crime that, despite having released one of the most inventive albums of the year, Siobhan Donaghy is now dying from Aids (on stage in a crappy “reinvention” of Rent, fact-fans). This song, equal parts Kate Bush and Bjork, is absoulte nonsense – but very beautiful, stately nonsense with an ethereal vocal. No doubt it was deemed “too demanding” for the cretins that listen to Radio One. If only she had put “The” in front of her name, they might have paid attention.
:: Watch it on youtube

——–

10) Nelly Furtado – Say It Right

One of those songs that sits unloved and overshadowed on its parent album before revealing its true glory as a single. A slinky little minor-key ballad, its one of Nelly’s more atmospheric songs, although I’ve never really paid attention to what it’s all about. According to the internet, however, the lyrics go: “From my hands I could give you something that I made / From my mouth I could sing you another brick that I laid”. Nelly Furtado is nuts, isn’t she?
:: Watch it on youtube

——–

PS: As ever, the top 10 list is put together using my iTunes play counts and a bit of maths(!) to even out the bias towards songs that have been around all year.

PPS: Honourable mentions also go to The Klaxons – Golden Skans, White Stripes – You Don’t Know What Love Is, Gossip – Standing In The Way Of Control, Take That – Shine, Mark Ronson – Stop Me, The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name, Kanye West – Stronger, Arcade Fire – Intervention, Timbaland ft Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado – Give It To Me, New Young Pony Club – The Bomb.

Beyoncé and Shakira’s day out

Honestly, these pop stars. You give them a day off and they just go off and record a smash hit single and a slinky video to go with it. Tsk.

Once again, for those of you too lazy to press play here is what you have missed:

00:00-00:20 Someone really needs to turn that kettle off.
00:20-00:23 Beyoncé’s hips are ginormous. It’s like she’s got two frozen chickens stuffed up her.
00:26-00:28 Ouch! Shakira has dislocated her shoulder in a nonsensical tribute Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. Except Shak’s not in a straightjacket, but a really hot dress. (Try not to let the image of Mel Gibson in a really hot dress give you nightmares, readers).
00:50-01:00 What kind of person puts curtains up at the beach?
01:05-01:10 Beyoncé is wearing Shakira’s wig.
01:11-01:20 Now Shakira is wearing Beyoncé’s wig! What kind of follicular madness is this?
01:20-01:30 Are we in a pole dancing club, a hall of mirrors, or a mixture both? Whatever, it’s right kinky.
02:04-02:20 Girls, if you’re going to writhe around on the floor like children, at least put on some comfortable clothes. Those dresses will cost a fortune at the dry cleaners.
02:58-02:10 All that steam from the kettle has set off the sprinklers. I told you so.
03:08-03:12 When Shakira sings “we can laugh about it”, it cuts to a picture of B and S (as they shall henceforth be known) doing a laugh. The director has earned his multi-million dollar fee and we can all go home.

Beyoncé and Shakira’s day out

Honestly, these pop stars. You give them a day off and they just go off and record a smash hit single and a slinky video to go with it. Tsk.

Once again, for those of you too lazy to press play here is what you have missed:

00:00-00:20 Someone really needs to turn that kettle off.
00:20-00:23 Beyoncé’s hips are ginormous. It’s like she’s got two frozen chickens stuffed up her.
00:26-00:28 Ouch! Shakira has dislocated her shoulder in a nonsensical tribute Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. Except Shak’s not in a straightjacket, but a really hot dress. (Try not to let the image of Mel Gibson in a really hot dress give you nightmares, readers).
00:50-01:00 What kind of person puts curtains up at the beach?
01:05-01:10 Beyoncé is wearing Shakira’s wig.
01:11-01:20 Now Shakira is wearing Beyoncé’s wig! What kind of follicular madness is this?
01:20-01:30 Are we in a pole dancing club, a hall of mirrors, or a mixture both? Whatever, it’s right kinky.
02:04-02:20 Girls, if you’re going to writhe around on the floor like children, at least put on some comfortable clothes. Those dresses will cost a fortune at the dry cleaners.
02:58-02:10 All that steam from the kettle has set off the sprinklers. I told you so.
03:08-03:12 When Shakira sings “we can laugh about it”, it cuts to a picture of B and S (as they shall henceforth be known) doing a laugh. The director has earned his multi-million dollar fee and we can all go home.