“IT WAS AN UNCONVENTIONAL SONG. One that almost didn’t get released,” says Shakira of her 2006 hit “Hips Don’t Lie.”
Five years after she scored her first top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit, “Whenever, Wherever,” the Colombian singer’s second English-language album, 2005’s Oral Fixation, Vol. 2, got off to a rocky start when the lead single, “Don’t Bother,” stalled at No. 42 on the chart.
Instead of choosing a second single from the album, Shakira went back into the studio and, working with former Fugee Wyclef Jean, co-wrote a new track, “Hips Don’t Lie,” that embraced her roots, “cumbia and typical Colombian folkloric instrumentation,” she tells Billboard.
Shakira, then 29, was so confident with the results that, she says, “I called up the head of my record label [Sony] and…
