Shakira Explains Why She Almost Didn’t Release ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ as Hit Song Turns 20

“Hips Don’t Lie” is an ageless anthem this is nonetheless drawing listeners to bounce flooring around the globe because it turns 20. However, Shakira very just about did not get to unencumber it.

The 48-year-old musician collaborated with Wyclef Jean at the music, which crowned the Billboard Hot 100 in 2005, and it has since gathered greater than 2 billion streams on Spotify by myself and straight away invokes a way of nostalgia for the early aughts each and every time it performs.

During a Thursday, May 8, look on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Shakira mirrored at the particular music, which she mentioned “changed [her] story.”

Interestingly, she informed host Jimmy Fallon that she needed to struggle to get it incorporated on her 2005 album Oral Fixation, Vol. 2. In truth, including the music became out to be a pricey chance that fortuitously paid off.

“I remember my album was already distributed and then this idea came up and Wyclef and I met. We started working on this track,” she recalled, explaining that the album had already been despatched out to shops on the market. “The funniest thing is that I had a dream — the most random dream about Wyclef.”

Shakira persevered, pronouncing, “Then I woke up, and my manager called me and said, ‘You know what? Wyclef wants to work with you.’ And I’m like, ‘No, no. It can’t be. I had a dream about Wyclef last night. Why would I dream about Wyclef?’ ”

Fallon, 50, joked that she “manifested” the collaboration, and Shakira emphasised that she had religion in it. So a lot, actually, that she reached out to the pinnacle of her report corporate on the time (Donny Ienner) studio and prompt him to drag her information again in order that it may well be repackaged with “Hips Don’t Lie” incorporated.

“You’ve got to believe me. You’ve got to trust me You do that, we have a hit,” she remembered telling him. “He did it, we repackaged the albums and it changed my story.”

“Hips Don’t Lie” become a long-lasting spoil that’s not simply one in every of Shakira’s all-time defining anthems; it is usually an plain vintage from the technology.

There used to be otherwise that the music modified Shakira’s lifestyles: “People call me Shakira twice,” she mentioned, nodding to the best way that she is known as “Shakira, Shakira” within the lyrics.

Speaking to Billboard in 2023, Shakira printed simply how a lot of a chance “Hips Don’t Lie” can have been for her.

“Latin music wasn’t really at its peak like it is right now in the U.S.,” she mentioned. “Many radios, at first, really didn’t want to play ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ because it sounded too Latin for them.”

To have a good time the music’s giant birthday, Shakira and Wyclef carried out it on The Tonight Show previous this week.

Their giant efficiency got here just a day after Shakira ascended the stairs on the iconic Metropolitan Museum of Art to wait the 2025 Met Gala.

After making her Met Gala debut in 2024, she returned for a 2d consecutive yr. This time, she opted for a blush purple princess robe with a long educate.

Despite her trendy look, Shakira famous one factor along with her glance — “Everyone stepped on my train” — joking that it used to be “getting tie-dyed” from all the sneakers that had been stepping on it.

The singer treated it with grace regardless that and informed Fallon that she took the piece of her robe off and left it at the back of, pronouncing, “It must be somewhere at the Metropolitan.”

“I just left it there,” she mentioned, joking that it used to be now “part of the exhibition.”