the queasy, awkward appeal of shakira's "she wolf"

I love it, and I hate it, and I think it sounds like a 12-year old's concept of a cougar anthem or something.

MAKE IT STOP

fuckin love it

i only know this song from snl, and it was really awkward. yet appealing!

somehow it's harder to swallow when she's gyrating and lipsyncing to it, though she's certainly nice to look at, etc

in a performance context it's just so silly i wanna kill myself

i like this a lot and i can't figure out why i don't LOVE it as so many seem to

i kinda wish this was a crazy over the top memorable song based on the concept and the silly howls, but really there's no song there, or even a groove, it's just kind of a vapor imo.

despite her weird hiccuping voice and the usual lyrical oddities, it's just so...anonymous

even the howls are kind of quiet, i didn't even notice them until the second listen

what i do love: the balearic guitar line

i dunno, u guys are like expecting all this stuff from it. it's like can't she just have a pop song with some eccentricity? why does it have to be all or nothing?

also shakira is MAD HOT

all i'm saying is as a pop song it's not much, eccentricity or not

I kind of don't see how you can say it's an anonymous pop song when it doesn't really sound like any of the stuff around it on the charts...?

what i'm saying is that the eccentricity doesn't have much to do with its quality

xp it just sounds like your standard 2009 electro? with a few more generic disco strings?

i mean i like it, i enjoy it when it's on the radio and i'll play it in itunes like...a couple of times a week. but it's never been that "omg must listen to on repeat for an hour" type of pop earworm, which you suspect it wants to be

see, you keep saying things about what you suspect shakira wants to be right now. maybe she just wants to have a good pop song that's kind of weird.

that you DON'T necessarily want to overplay and kill

"oh ho-hum, yet another vocoder electro-disco tune, haven't we had enough of these"

xp lololol, what we are seeing here is a fundamental difference between US and UK charts, I think

The "dancing" in this video is insane.

3 best things about it

1) balearic guitar line
2) "darling it is no joke, this is lyncathropy"
3) how endearingly half-hearted the second "awoo" is like she's concerned it's not working and just wants to get it out of the way quickly this time

hahah thank you youtube comments:

auuuuuu!!!!
Sexy ledy,
my favorite anomal!

She looked very good on SNL the other night, still not convinced by either of the two songs though.

surm no big multiplatinum pop star releases a lead single from a new album thinking "i want this to be just okay so people don't play it too much and get sick of it"

except of course Shakira

well, i wasn't saying "just OK." i'm just saying she might not have intended it to be OH SO FUCKD UP AND WEIRD, just because there's a howl in it.

Shakira is rad everybody stop saying anything less than 100% supportive of her, thx

j0hn did you vandalise wikipedia?

In childhood, Shakira preferred rock and roll music heavily listening her favorite rock bands like Led Zeppelin,[91] The Beatles, Kreator, Nirvana, The Police and U2. She lists John Lennon as her #1 musical influence. She was also deeply influenced by Rolling Stones, AC/DC, The Who, The Pretenders, Scorpions, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Cure, Richard Daniel Roman, Tom Petty, Depeche Mode, Clash, Ramones, who influenced on her many prominent songs. In a recent interview to Elenco magazine, she noted that in her opinion the perfect songs are Imagine by John Lennon and No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley.

hahaha

yo no sé nada

Abbott, I'm taking that youtube comment as a display name.

Also, this song is A+.

Loved this as 'Loba' when it was posted a few months back, but the English version is a bit clunky all round - 'she wolf' isn't a pretty or charming phrase, unlike some of her other lyrics. It's worse as the backing vocal - whatever the breathy Spanish is there is much better. The video is obviously ridiculous, which is fine, but I really amn't a fan of her with scraped-back hair.

I do like the music though. The balearic guitar line is excellent, good spot. As is the disco bass.

xp it just sounds like your standard 2009 electro? with a few more generic disco strings?

maybe it really is a trans-Atlantic chart-difference thing, but instead of "more generic disco strings" I hear the whole thing as really appealingly soft-focus and light, which is nice big difference from the whole heavy-grinding slablike mechanical strobe-lit take on electro that usually gets on pop charts.

otm

i think this is great, so many awesome moves in that video

xxp otm seconded to nabisco, i think this is actually pretty laid back and funky for real

it is slightly awkward, btw, but I thought awkwardness was part of what everybody loved about Shakira. awkward translations, dance moves that sit awkwardly far from "sexy" and are more just like amazing muscular exhibitions, awkward electro-for-butterflies pop songs.

hahaha yes exactly; I kind of thought the reason why everyone went gaga over her in the first place was because of "lucky that my breasts are small and humble/So you don't confuse them with mountains"!

one of the many extremely great things about this song is her assertion that she's not only a sexy lady werewolf but ALSO that she owns some sort of hot dude detector, which kinda makes me feel like this could also be a hit single in xanth.

xpost nabisco is totes otm about the lite touch this song employs, and i think that's kinda interesting given how straight-up raunchy the subject matter is. like if somebody asked me to imagine a song about a magic monster horndoggin' it i would probably envision something way closer to, uh, "closer" than italo disco or w/e

'she wolf' isn't a pretty or charming phrase

respectfully but vigorously disagree w/this

'she wolf' isn't a pretty or charming phrase

I agree with this, but where I break ranks with you is that if I am about to get totally animal with a lady calling herself a "she wolf" and she winds up being pretty and charming, I'm gonna be pretty fucking pissed off

she gazelle more like

I like the Spanish language version of this better but both are great. I was pretty amazed that the singer from the Bravery had something to do with it.

Her performance on SNL made me realize she's like the world's most famous pole dancer.

no, she's a really excellent dancer who's also unapologetically sexual in her dancing. that's kind of the only axis on which shakira's dancing, which is excellent, resembles pole dancing.

Seriously the moves in this that aren't pole dancing moves (ie her dancing in that cage), in the sparkly vag cave: 'crunch crunch my torso is a wolf head'
and on the building roof: 'I have invented a new form of skipping'

wd like to hear the spanish version of this

i love her dancing - she obv looks hot doing it most of the time and sexy too but there wasnt any of the serious/joyless/sexbot type of dancing when i saw her on jonathan ross' chatshow a few weeks back - she has a lot of fun, which makes it nicer in a way, and sweeter. a nice change basically.

OK, I just re-watched her performance on You Tube and it wasn't as exploitive as I remembered. They need to start slapping the autotune back on her vocals though. Yeesh...

I never think of her dancing as really conventionally teasing or sexy, because it's so athletic and strangely paced and you're never sure where she's going -- it's more like watching the undulations of some alien life form, in some whole other vocabulary of undulations, where they verge on what we consider "sexy" but are just different enough that you don't know what, if anything, they communicate, and just watch

I find her dancing rather charming. Seems to me that about half of it is undeniable sexy and half it is endearingly awkward/clunky/spastic, and you never know when each side is going to show up.

Love this tune btw.

i find her dancing fully sexy and am only not posting the video cause embedding disabled by request

Straddle the line, it's discord and rhyme.

my one question about the video is why is she dancing in a giant, sparkling vadge?

the dancing is sexy and charming whereas someone like britney in slave 4 u or whatever is neither, just an attempt at being sexy as we apparently believe it should be (po faced, mechanical, grim)

Other than Shakira's lovely cheeky nature, the Jonathan Ross show thing is horrible. They do the same rubbish camerawork as on strictly come dancing - too much swoopycam and snare shots when all you really want is to see what she's doing. Show the feet, dammit!

"I never think of her dancing as really conventionally teasing or sexy, because it's so athletic and strangely paced and you're never sure where she's going -- it's more like watching the undulations of some alien life form, in some whole other vocabulary of undulations, where they verge on what we consider "sexy" but are just different enough that you don't know what, if anything, they communicate, and just watch"

THIS

I'm sorry but this video - and the dancing - but most specifically her WIGS - all of it terrifies me.

i wish she didn't sing this song in a tiny Hilary Duff voice instead of her usual delivery -- it's very tempting to sing along to the chorus like "meow meow meow meow"

same old story, ilx afraid of she wolfs

this reminds me that i haven't thought about trevor jackson in a long time

I don't mind the song when I watch it without the video.

I just feel really uncomfortable watching it - especially as I'm at work.

my one question about the video is why is she dancing in a giant, sparkling vadge?

it's her she cave

I feel like I could write about ten pages of feminist analysis of this video and Shakira's career choices.

if you guys haven't heard the Spanish version, just search "Loba" on YouTube, same video, but I prefer the vocals to the English version.

anadu34270 (46 minutes ago) 0 Reply | Spam
Pff Elle craint trop cette chanson cette video Shakira jladoré avant mais maintenant elel fait vraiment que des truc nul et bien commercial

BrokencydeChick109 (19 hours ago) 0 Reply | Spam
omg i lvoe shakira. she is my idol. plus we r so much alike. we're both pretty. sexy. great singers, nd we r very flexible. Shakiraaaa<3

BrokencydeChick109

The queasy, awkward appeal of shakira's "she wolf" has new answers.

i just listened to this, and realized how much i like the beat. it's so fun, with the little tinkly synths!

"Awoooooo!"

this song is awesome im w/ surm

"Awoooooo!"

― wanko ergo surm (kingkongvsgodzilla), Wednesday, November 25, 2009 8:27 AM Bookmark

this song has never not been awesome, i just read this thread for the first time and everyone being eh about this sound like they're just hearing a completely diff song.

there's a mike simonietta edit that's pretty pointless but nice btw

http://i563.photobucket.com/albums/ss71/fabrickd/th_Shakira.jpg

"Awoooooo!"

― wanko ergo surm (kingkongvsgodzilla), Wednesday, November 25, 2009 8:27 AM Bookmark

― BIG HOOS was the drummer for the rock band Gay Mom (The Reverend), Wednesday, November 25, 2009 10:26 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

What the FUCK is with that terrifying song she's been promoting in the AMA's and on late night?!? She Wolf should be the 2nd and 3rd single.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAal8xHfV0c

awoo