An international pop music icon who enchants millions of people around the world: the extraordinary Shakira will exclusively reveal herself today on Verissimo.
Verissimo, the weekend's guests (Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 March): from Melissa Satta to Shakira but also Gabriel Garko and Alfa
While we wait to discover what she will share in the living room of Silvia Toffanin, let's learn something more about the singer.
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Who is Shakira
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, known as Shakira, was born in Barranquilla, a port city in northern Colombia, on February 2, 1977 (she is 47 years old), to William Mebarak Chadid, a U.S. jeweler born in New York with Lebanese origins, and Nidia del Carmen Ripoll Torrado, a Colombian of Spanish and Italian descent. From a very young age, she began to cultivate an interest in show business: at the age of five, she revealed her predisposition for Arabic dances and songs. According to her mother, Shakira loved to write as a child. The first gift Shakira received from her father was a typewriter, with which she began to draft her first songs and poems.
Earning the reputation of a child prodigy, at thirteen she signed her first contract with Sony Music Colombia and released her first album titled "Magic".
The career
After graduating, she decided to dedicate herself entirely to music, recording her second album "Danger", which was well received. But it was with the subsequent "Bare Feet" that she achieved extraordinary popularity in Latin America, Brazil, and Spain. The album's sales figures far exceeded one million. In particular, it was a hit in Brazil, a vast land with an equally vast market. Her fourth album "Where Are the Thieves?" was produced in collaboration with a giant of Latin music, Emilio Estefan. Meanwhile, Shakira's fan base expanded to the United States, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico, and platinum records rained down.
Shakira has always been recognized as one of the main singers of the Latin pop genre. In 1996 she recorded her very first album although global success came five years later with the album Laundry Service which sold more than 20 million copies. Among her most successful songs, we find Chantaje, Me Enamoré, in 2010 she was a hit with her Waka waka which was also the soundtrack of the soccer world cup. Also worth mentioning are songs like Loca, Whenever, wherever, She wolf. Moreover, Shakira has also won two Grammy Awards and 10 Latin Grammy Awards in her career.
The physique
How tall is Shakira? Another question that is very searched online is how tall Shakira is. The singer's height is about 150-157 centimeters while her weight is more or less around 50 kilograms.
The private life: the end with Piqué
In 2003, she got engaged to the young Antonio De La Rua, but their story ended eight years later.
In 2011, Shakira started dating Gerard Piqué, but this story was also destined to end. The conclusion came in 2022, due to the man's infidelity.
The songs
The Colombian pop star discovered that the father of her children was cheating on her with Clara Chia. Since then, Shakira has never hidden her pain and anger, among other things sung in the revenge song Music Sessions Vol 53, full of biting phrases that have gone around the world. Like the famous "You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo, you traded a Rolex for a Casio"
The children
Shakira's children are two, Milan and Sasha, born in 2013 and 2015 respectively from her union with Piqué. To them, the singer dedicated the song Acrostico.
"I am a tiger mom. It's very tiring. The other day I read a study that says that French women are the most relaxed mothers. Well, I wish I were French, but unfortunately, I am not. I don't have that detachment, I live everything with passion to the fullest, and since now motherhood is my full-time job, I put a lot of energy there. It's beautiful, electrifying, wonderful, but exhausting at the same time," Shakira told Vanity Fair.
The last single with the ex
The Colombian pop star Shakira attacks again her former partner and ex-footballer Gerard Piqué, and she does it with a song she chose to title "Última", because "if all goes well, it's the last song I will write on this matter. I felt there was still something there, stuck in my throat, and I needed to get it out. I made the Sony marketing manager listen to it and he started crying. I had never seen a man cry in my studio before." Almost two years after the end of the relationship, the singer has changed her life: now she lives in Miami with her children and just today her album "Women no longer cry", a definitely more serene and less bitter album compared to the past, is released. In Última Shakira seems very determined: "We lost love halfway. How could you get tired of something so genuine? Don't try to convince me, I ask you. It's already decided, what we have learned is all that remains (...) Probably over time you will regret it. And one day you will want to knock on my door again. But now I have decided to be alone." Words of goodbye thanks to which the Colombian seems to have really turned the page: "While writing each song of this album I rebuilt myself. When I sang them, my tears turned into diamonds and my vulnerability into resilience."