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 album
Fijacion Oral/
Oral Fixation. Volume one 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
Britpop, 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
Fijacion Oral, but from every other record in her catalog -- or, most importantly, from any other
pop album in 2005. Other artists may be bigger than
Shakira while others may make more fully realized albums, but as of 2005, no other
pop artist attempts as much and achieves as much as
Shakira, as this often enthralling album proves. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine