Personnel: Shakira (vocals); Fadi Hardan (chant); Tim Mitchell (guitar, keyboards, programming); Rene Toledo, David Levita, Tony Reyes, Carlos Santana (guitar); Pro Arte Orchestra, Pedro Alfonso (strings); Pete Davis (horns, keyboards, programming); Teddy Mulet (horns); Leandro Fresco, Albert Sterling Menendez (keyboards); Emmanuel Cauvet, Victor Indrizzo (drums); Luis Conte, Archie Pena, Brendan Buckley (percussion); Jim Bean (programming); Gustavo Cerati (guitar, keyboards, programming, background vocals); Lyle Workman (guitar); Lester Mendez (keyboards, programming); Paul Bushnell, Chris Chaney (bass guitar); Matt Chamberlain, Shawn Pelton (drums); Mario Ichausti (background vocals).
Audio Mixers: Gustavo Celis; Rob Jacobs.
Recording information: Air Studios, London, England; Church Of The Ephiphany, Miami, FL; Fantasy Studios, San Francisco, CA; Hit Factory Criteria, Miami, FL; Ike's Garage, Miami, FL; La Marimonda, Nassau, Bahamas; Skyline Studios, New York, NY; Supersonic Studios, Miami, FL; The Warehouse, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Unisono, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Photographer: Jaume DeLaiguana.
Colombian pop superstar Shakira has accomplished two remarkable commercial feats thus far in her career: she has crossed over almost completely from the Latin pop market, and she has managed to cross-reference a vast array of pop styles that go well beyond mere south-of-the-border divides. On ORAL FIXATION VOL. 2, her fourth album since her 1998 breakthrough DONDE ESTAN LOS LADRONES?, Shakira once again fearlessly mixes angst-ridden alt-rock with touches of melodic singer-songwriter soul-baring and dance pop so infectious it's hard not to imagine the singer shimmying along in the studio.
While 2001's LAUNDRY SERVICE featured English-language vocals for the first time, ORAL FIXATION VOL. 2 is sung entirely in English (VOL. 1 is the Spanish-language version). Some might cry sell-out, but that's a tough rap to make stick when it's clear that Shakira, who is considerably more of an individual than most pop divas, genuinely wants her music to speak to as broad an audience of music lovers as possible. Tracks like "Animal City" and "Costume Makes the Clown" are fierce, contemporary pop-rockers, while "Your Embrace" and "Illegal" (featuring the ubiquitous Carlos Santana) are confessional, acoustic pop numbers that wouldn't feel out of place on a Meredith Brooks album. "Timor" is not only a reminder that Shakira is never far from the dance floor, it also features the best groove of any protest song since "Beds Are Burning." Some might wonder about the absence of certain Latin pop influences, but with almost all writing and production credits going to Shakira, it's clear that this is her party and she's in charge of the music.
Shakira delights in confounding expectations, and nowhere is that better seen than in how she secured a massive crossover audience on her own terms. She blended Latin pop and American mainstream pop, on both the dance and easy listening sides of the equation, on her 2001 breakthrough, Laundry Service, but it was no crass cash grab -- she eased herself into the transition, balancing songs in Spanish and English on the record while crafting tunes in both languages to appeal to both longtime fans and new listeners. That set the stage for her magnum opus of 2005, the two-part album Fijación Oral/Oral Fixation. Volume one was her first Spanish-language Latin pop album since 1998 and the second was her first ever all-English crossover album, and if anybody was expecting the latter to be a continuation of Laundry Service, consisting of nothing but sexy dance tunes and power ballads, Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 will be a bit of a surprise: it's a deadly serious, ambitious pop/rock album, most assuredly not frivolous dance-pop. Even when the album dives into pulsating neo-disco, it's in the form of a protest song in the closer, "Timor," which isn't exactly by-the-numbers pop. And that's a pretty good description of Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 in general -- it's pop, but it's unconventional. Even when she alludes to pop divas past, whether it's with the foreboding gospel choir on "How Do You Do" that brings to mind "Like a Prayer" or how she cribs from Alanis Morissette on "Illegal" ("You said you would love me until you died/And as far as I know you're still alive" is very close to "You Oughta Know"), Shakira twists these references to her own purposes, taking the music in unexpected directions. All these turns and detours lead to the same general destination: the sound is grandly theatrical, darkly sultry, and unapologetically lurid, a place where Madonna and U2 exist not as peers, but as collaborators. For if this album is anything, it's a global pop/rock album with each of those modifiers carrying equal weight: these are pop songs performed as arena rock, belonging not to a single country but to the world as a whole. As such, the album touches on everything from the expected Latin rhythms to glitzy Euro-disco, trashy American rock & roll, and stomping Britpop, all punctuated by some stark confessionals, as Shakira sings about everything from love to religion, stopping along the way to reveal that women with 24 inch waists may indeed be heartbroken. If some of these ideas don't necessarily gel, at least Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 is alive with ambition and, more often than not, Shakira winds up with music that is distinctive as both songs and recordings. And that means that Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 is not only a markedly different album from Fijación Oral, but from every other record in her catalog -- or, most importantly, from any other pop album in 2005. Other artists may be bigger than Shakira while others may make more fully realized albums, but as of 2005, no other pop artist attempts as much and achieves as much as Shakira, as this often enthralling album proves. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine minimize