Sale El Sol con Shakira
Shakira llego a Los Angeles este pasado fin de semana para presentar su Sale El Sol Tour en Staples Center el 23 de octubre y en Arrowhead Pond el 25 de octubre. I attended the show at Staples and had the best seats I could have asked for, Row 11 from stage and directly next to the runway section of the stage. The show began shortly after 9:00pm y por casi dos horas Shakira nos llevo en un viaje del que yo no queria dejar. To the surprise of the sold out crowd, Shakira began her concert from the middle of the floor, surrounded by the crowds and made her way to the stage, shaking hands and singing “Pienso En Ti”. This is one of her most haunting and captivating songs, which first appeared in her breakout hit cd Pies Descalzos and recently was featured in the soundtrack for Love in the Time of Cholera. She made her way to the front of the stage and jumped into “Why Wait?” from her She Wolf album. The journey had begun and Shaki took us back to her Spanish hits like “Si Te Vas”, “Te Dejo Madrid”, “Inevitable” “La Tortura”, “Ciega Sordomuda”, y “Ojos Asi”. Shaki flipped between english and spanish and sang her newer hits in english, like “Whenever, Wherever”, “She Wolf”, “Underneath Your Clothes”, & ”Loca”. In the middle of the show, Shaki slowed things down and brought an acoustic set to the front of the runway, where she sang “Despedida”, “Gypsy”, and a weird cover of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”, which I didn’t even know what it was at the time. Even with an acoustic set, Shaki danced and danced some more. She did a very sensual dance that reminded me to flamenco or some type of Spaniard dance. I mean, you had to be there, it was AMAZING. Another amazing moment of the night was the suprise appearance of Rene from Calle 13, who came out to help perform “Gordita” , one of my favorites from her new album. It seems la colombiana left most of her new material for the second half of the show, which included “Sale el Sol” y “Antes de las Seis”. To close things out, Shakira brought out her two biggest hit to date “Hips Don’t Lie” and ending the show with “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)”. The energy was unexplainable with the crowds singing her spanish songs out loud and jumping up and down to her upbeat songs. I’ve seen Shakira many times in concert and this was by far, her best one. A couple of parts I didn’t like so much was the rock arrangement to “Whenever Wherever” but it is understandable that artists want to rearrange their songs to make them sound different. I also didn’t like the dance lesson Shaki gave to four lucky girls from the crowd. I would’ve added another song instead, lol. There are just too many songs to fit in a two hour concert. I was still very very happy with the great selection in music that captured Shakira’s classic Spanish hits, there were some great songs from the new cd, there were some cool electronic dance songs like “Las De La Intuicion”, and of course your ballads. I can’t say much more, I admit I may be a bit bias since Shakira is my all time favorite artist, but the reviews from various newspapers, like the NY Times, have given the concert great comments. Shakira is now on her way to the rest of the U.S. and will continue to Europe and ending that leg of the tour in December. It seems her latin american fans will have to wait until 2011 to see her as she will likely go to Mexico and South American then…maybe if we get lucky, she’ll do a few more cities in the U.S. Here’s proof of how great my seats are, check out a couple of my videos below. You can also visit my you tube channel at www.youtube.com/spanglishpop to view all the other videos.
