Sony Music U.S. Latin

After her split from her longtime partner, soccer star Gerard Piqué, Shakira topped the chart with the diss track “BZRP Music Sessions #53,” in which she went in on her ex with lines like “So much time at the gym/But maybe work out your brain a bit too.” She said her eldest son also reacted to the breakup through music.

When asked by the Sunday Times how Milan, 11, and Sasha, 9, who she shares with Piqué, feel about the song, Shakira says, “They know that there’s only one way to live life and it’s accepting the pain. And each one of us has different ways of doing that.”

She continues, “When his father and I were going through separation, he wrote two amazing songs, the kind that will bring you to tears.”

For her part, Shakira says “BZRP Music Sessions #53” allowed her to “exorcise a lot of the demons that were tormenting me. And it felt good.”

A line from that song, “Women no longer cry, women get paid,” inspired the title of her first album in seven years, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, which translates to Women No Longer Cry. It’s out on March 22.

As for why it’s been so long since she released an album, she tells the Times, “For a long time I put my career on hold, to be next to Gerard, so he could play football. There was a lot of sacrifice for love.”

Musing about the relationship, she says, “Empathy is key in an artist’s work. An athlete is in a constant state of war and has to avoid empathy at all costs. That’s why it’s probably a really bad idea for an artist to hook up with an athlete.” 

Taylor Swift, take note.

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