Shakira prefers her newer music to her older works.
The ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ hitmaker, 47, first penned a song, ‘Tus Gafas Oscuras’, when she was just eight years old, and she admits that she likes her new music because it’s evolved lyrically and stylistically.
Speaking to Nile Rodgers on Deep Hidden Meaning Radio on Apple Music 1, the ‘Whenever, Wherever’ – who released her latest album, ‘Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran’, last month – said: “This is a different time in my life with this album, and I think I’ve come a long way, but I prefer what I do today. I don’t know, is that something that happens to all of us, that we like ourselves better with time?
“I wonder if that happens to all artists. I prefer the stuff I do now. I prefer the music that I do now and the way I sing and interpret now, the way I write now. I like my stylistic choices. I think they’re better now than, I don’t know, 20 years ago.”
Nile agreed and responded: “I think that’s what we call maturity. If you don’t develop, what’s the point? If you’re just going to stay the same, why be an artist? If you just feel like, ‘I’ve already made my biggest statement, why continue?’ And that’s why I keep making music. I feel like my best days are ahead of me instead of behind me.”
Shakira added: “Yeah. Well, that’s the attitude. I think that’s the way that every artist needs to think in order to evolve right?”
The Colombian superstar also spoke on the importance of artists being “authentic” and “truthful to ourselves” if they want success.
She said: “It’s like people have this ultra sensitive intelligence, or almost metaphysical that they can really understand the artist’s intentions. They smell what’s true, what’s authentic, and differentiate what’s genuine from what is not. So that’s why we have to continue being authentic and truthful to ourselves and our instincts and our intuition, because that’s really the formula to success. If we calculate things too much, there’s a disconnection between the artist’s sensibility and what people perceive. And that disconnection is usually what leads to failure. There have been moments when you think things too much and that doesn’t really work.”
Listen back to the full interview on-demand with an Apple Music subscription via apple.co/_DHMRadio.