The Story of Latin American Superstar Shakira
How Shakira grew into one of the biggest ever selling artists in Latin America.
Born on February 2nd 1977, Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll has become a global music star known simply as Shakira. The Columbian has worked as singer-songwriter, dancer, record producer, choreographer and model. She broke on to the Columbian and Latin American scene in the early 1990s.
Shakira grew up listening to rock and roll, Latin and Arabic music – something which is still influencing her music to this very day. Her first two albums that were produced struggled and didn’t receive much exposure outside of Colombia. After this unsuccessful spell Shakira produced her own album titled ‘Pies Descalzos’. This album brought great fame across Latin America and Spain.
In 1998 Shakira produced her worldwide breakthrough album ‘Dónde Están los Ladrones?’ which sold over 10 million copies across the globe. Up until now Shakira had produced her albums in her native tongue of Spanish but took a different approach and produced her first English single ‘Whenever Wherever’. This single became the best selling single in the UK in 2002 and the album it was taken from ‘Laundry Service’ went on to sell over 20 million copies.
Awards
During her career Shakira has won many awards. She has five MTV Music Video Awards, two Grammy Awards, six Billboard Music Awards, Twelve Billboard Latin Music Awards and her very own Hollywood Star. On top of these awards Shakira has been nominated for a Golden Globe award. Her music has enabled her to perform at President Obama’s inaugural ceremony in January 2009. All this together has meant Shakira is the biggest selling Columbian artist of all time and second in the ranks for Latin America behind Gloria Estefan.
Shakira had arguably one of her greatest successes with the track ‘Waka Waka (this time for Africa)’ which was chosen as the official song for the Fifa World Cup in 2010. The song became the biggest selling World Cup song ever and the video is the third most watched video of all time with over 485 million views. This is even more impressive as it was the English speaking video only (there was also a Spanish version which received millions of views).
As well as entertaining the world, Shakira has setup a charity called Pies Descalzos Foundation, which provides schools to the poor across Columbia. She has performed at many other charity concerts promoting anything from Environmental to Political issues. Shakira is also dating football superstar Gerard Pique who plays for Barcelona and the Spanish national team. As of 2012, Shakira has made eight albums.
This article has been written by Roger Walters from www.muzu.tv/gb, a free music video site playing songs from a huge range of artists.
