Britons often have problems accepting rock music that comes from non-English-speaking countries. If Johnny Foreigner sticks to his own language, he at least retains an exotic allure, but when he starts to sing in English, we think "Eurovision" and instinctively wince.
The success enjoyed in the UK by Shakira Isabel Mebarak Repoll, then, is all the more surprising. Since 2001, the Colombian singer-songwriter, hugely successful in the Spanish-speaking world, has been waging a serious assault on the anglophone market. When she was learning English, she would not only sing in the language but write in it, too: in 2005 she released two different albums, one written and sung in Spanish, the other in English, each wolfing down a smorgasbord of musical influences. Last July, her Hips Don't Lie single hit No 1 in time to become the last song played on Top of the Pops.
Hips Don't Lie is saved until the end of this show, her first British gig in four years, and its blending of hip-hop, reggaeton, jazz, Latin, pop and soul influences results in an irrepressible moment of pop euphoria that Shakira works expertly. It ends with an elaborate Bollywood-styled set piece, six sari-wrapped dancers dipping and swirling amid an explosion of pastel- coloured ticker-tape.
Yet despite the carefully planned choreography, Shakira's music remains earthy and natural. There are times tonight where she and her multi-national band sound like a world music gazetteer. Shards of Middle Eastern influence (her father is Lebanese) collide with filigrees of flamenco guitar work in the epic No, and excitable hip-hop rhythms coexist with Caribbean moods and calypso bounce during La Tortura. While the influences are diverse and their application sometimes scattershot, the unifying constant is a hard-driven rock sound that gives the set momentum and purpose.
It certainly helps that Shakira is an avid student of the art of rock performance. There are bits of every great pop show(wo)man here: a connect-with-the-people foray into the crowd taken straight from the Bono playbook; a black T-shirt donned for an Alanis-like high-decibel emote; respectful nods to, and lifts from, Madonna, Beyoncé and J-Lo. And, whether she is writhing during Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos or starting Whenever, Wherever with an elaborate belly-dance routine involving a silver rope, Shakira's expressive sensuality gives her show a power and potency that renders language barriers irrelevant.
