Shakira Is Embracing Her Newfound Freedom Now That Her Ex-Husband Isn’t ‘Dragging Me Down’

Shakira’s latest album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, is the product of both a breakup and a breakthrough. The record, which arrived last week, was created in the wake of the dissolution of her relationship with Gerard Piqué in 2022. During a recent interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, she detailed the ways in which the end of their marriage provided her with the freedom to explore more fulfilling avenues.

“I didn’t have time because of the husband factor,” Shakira explained about being able to lock in on her creative endeavorers. “Now I’m husbandless. Yeah, the husband was dragging me down. Now I’m free. Now I can actually work.” With that weight lifted from her shoulders, Shakira crafted her first full-length studio album in seven years.

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“Making this body of work has been an alchemical process. While writing each song I was rebuilding myself,” Shakira shared in a statement when the record was first announced. “While singing them, my tears transformed into diamonds, and my vulnerability into strength.”

In a review of the album, Rolling Stone wrote: “In Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, Shakira finally gets to turn the page on these tempestuous past two years, and reintroduce herself–not as Shakira the soccer mom, nor Shakira the heartbroken–but Shakira fucking Mebarak, international pop icon and undefeated champ.”

With this album, Shakira was able to approach her healing and the overall reshaping of her narrative in on her own terms. “For too long we’ve been sent to cry with script in our hands and without an end just because we’re women,” she said on The Tonight Show. “We have to conceal our pain in front of our kids, in front of society. We have to heal in a certain way.” Shakira shares two children, ages 11 and 9, with Piqué.

“I don’t think anyone is supposed to tell us how to heal,” she continued. “No one is supposed to tell a she-wolf how to lick her wounds, you know? I think that now women decide when to cry, how to cry, and until when. Nobody’s supposed to tell us how to cope with the hardship of life.”

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