She’d already drafted the lyrics to the song by that point, but there, sitting in a high-profile-recording-artist sandwich (Camila Cabello was sat between them), Shakira found her perfect collaborator. “The song represents the newborn woman,” Shakira explains. “After you pass through the storm, you start to connect with the woman inside of you, with those womanly needs, your desires, and your passions.” I can think of few women who express their passions and desires more freely than Cardi B.
The music video also serves as an introduction to Shakira’s new album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran/Women No Longer Cry, which she released at the same time. It’s the first album she’s put out in seven years. Together, the 16 tracks are an ode to self-preservation amid hardship — something Shakira knows well after a very public breakup with former soccer player Gerard Piqué. “I was in the mud,” she says. “Making this music has shown me that my pain can be transformed into triumph.”
If her new music has one goal, it’s to “build bridges, to empower people, to help women discover their own strengths.” Shooting sexy centaurs in the heart and banishing them into space is just the first step, one that encapsulates the singer’s experiences of being reborn through writing this record. “I have rebuilt myself in the ways I believe are appropriate,” she says. “No one tells me how to cry or when to cry; no one tells me how to raise my children, no one tells me how I become a better version of myself. I decide that.”