The voice comes first. That infamous, breathy quiver, howling out the massively eerie ‘Pienso En Tí’. The cameras find the source eventually, strolling along the pit in a ginormous bubblegum pink gown, crooning from beneath an ominous hood. The whole thing is more Eva Peron than Shakira.
When she finally reaches the stage, both the gown and the stateswoman-like facade are done away with. Cracking into the thumping Middle Eastern ditty ‘Why Wait?’, she now looks exactly like Shakira should: metallic crop top, spray-on trousers, gleaming Botticelli curls, razor sharp hips, millions of teeth. “I’m here to please you”, she purrs. “Tonight, I’m all yours.” It’s enough to turn the most level-headed of onlookers to mush.
The stage set-up is simple: eight musicians supporting one gyrating front woman. It bears a close resemblance to clips I’ve seen of a raven-haired Shakira on her Tour Pies Descalzos in 1996. But then, why should she change things up? When you’re beautiful, charming and happen to have more energy than a newborn pony, who needs a lot of oversized props and doohickeys?
A rocked-up ‘Whenever, Wherever’ segues effortlessly into EMF’s ‘Unbelievable’, with Shakira lapping up every single whoop and wolf-whistle. She summons a group of musicians to the front of the stage for an acoustic interlude, including Spanish campfire rags like ‘Gypsy’ and ‘Ojos Así’. The latter sees our grinning seductress collapse to the ground in a heap, only to be resurrected again, beat by beat, by a dishy drummer smiting a dumbek.
Her vocals are unremarkable but consistent – she sounds divinely pretty at times and we’re never worried she’ll hit a bum note. She also tries her hand at guitar and harmonica, but let’s face it: no-one’s here to see Shakira play the harmonica. We’re here for the hips.
One particularly impressive thrust jump makes her look more lemur than human… wait, did I already compare her to an animal? It’s hard not to associate the swiveling siren with some form of untamed creature. Writhing around to all-conquering dance anthem ‘She-Wolf’, she could be one of any number of wild beasts.
Seventy per cent of the songs are sung in Spanish, yet it’s a perplexingly Irish affair tonight, as Shakira introduces her Cork-born touring violinist Una Palliser and the sexpot Asian drummer from earlier is revealed as one of our own (didn’t see that one coming).
It makes sense that a casual Shakira fan like myself would be somewhat disappointed with a show where I couldn’t sing along to most of the songs, especially when she leaves pop gems like oldie ‘Objection’ and newbie ‘Did It Again’ on the back burner. Still, a crowd of blatant Shakira fanatics seem to be equally thrilled by obscure numbers like 1998’s ‘Ciega, Sordomuda’ as this year’s Dizzee Rascal collaboration ‘Loca’... just as long as Shakira keeps popping, twitching and wriggling around like a demented seahorse,
She’s crazy, but they like it.