When Shakira split with her longtime partner Gerard Piqué in 2022 after 11 years together, the whole world opened up to the 47-year-old singer. She suddenly began rediscovering parts of herself that she had forgotten about long ago — and she’s now celebrating this new version.
Shakira unwrapped what she found buried deep within herself in a revealing new portrait in Rolling Stone. “Perspective,” she says slowly. “The ability to differentiate what’s important from what’s not so important. I found …” she said with a laugh. “My accent! My Caribbean accent is back now that I’m out of Spain.” That might be a slight dig at her ex, where she spent over a decade in Barcelona with him while he played soccer for FC Barcelona.
The “Hips Don’t Lie” singer is thrilled that her “accent is back,” but more importantly, she loves that she has “more swag” and she got her “sexy back.” Shakira and Piqué’s breakup came in the wake of his reported infidelity with model Clara Chía, but the crushing moment ended up inspiring her music. “I’ve been putting out music here and there, but it was really hard for me to put together a body of work,” Shakira told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show in March. “I didn’t have time. It was the husband factor. Now I’m husbandless. Yeah, the husband was dragging me down. Now I’m free. Now I can actually work.”
She’s been rumored to be dating everyone from F1 driver Lewis Hamilton to Emily in Paris star Lucien Laviscount, but she seems to be only courting herself right now. She told Rolling Stone, “I’m not thinking about that.… What space do I have for a man right now?” Now that Shakira has come out the other side from her split and a lengthy tax evasion case with the Spanish government, she likes what she sees.
“I’m so much less fragile than I thought,” she admitted. “I was always so scared of pain because I thought I wouldn’t survive it. Through this process, I became stronger than I thought I was. I became a more independent person, one who doesn’t rely on anyone but herself and her wolf pack.” We love a woman who is carving her own path and feeling how powerful her inner strength truly is.
