It’s been a long time since Shakira trascended Latino music to become one of the biggest international pop divas, as shown by the fact that, in a world where social media dominates almost everything, she’s the singer with most followers in Facebook, where her official site has more than 104 million fans.

The Colombian, who prepares a new album in Spanish, is an endless source of musical super hits and she already blew away last year with the singles “La Bicicleta” and “Chantaje” with her countrymen Carlos Vives and Maluma.

With “La Bicicleta”, a two times Grammy winner song including best recording and best song of the year, she got the number 1 in the top charts of 21 countries. Meanwhile, “Chantaje” managed to achieve 100 million views in YouTube in only 19 days, making it the fastest latino video to reach those numbers.

Shakira is used to set milestones: “Waka Waka”, the oficial South Africa World Cup song, is the only one to exceed the 100 million views in both versions (English and Spanish), and she’s the only artist that has authored a song for three consecutive World Cups.

It was precisely in the shooting of the song for the 2010 World Cup where she met her partner, the Spanish soccer player Gerard Piqué, father to her two sons, Milan and Sasha.

At 40, Shakira counts with four Grammys, sixteen Latin Grammys and finally one of the most important acknowledgements, which she received on January 16th in Davos (Switzerland), the Crystal Award of the World Economic Forum, for her leadership in the advocacy for education and early childhood development. 

A Committed Artist

Born in Barranquilla (Colombia) on February 2nd 1977, she kick-started the Pies Descalzos Foundation as soon as she started succeeding as a musician and a singer in her home country and in Latin America, and such involvement in the development of the childhood made her Ambassador of Good Will in UNICEF in 2003.

“I know I may sound vehement, like Bono once called me, and its just because I am. And I know that I can drive some people crazy with my persistence, but the reason why I’m so passionate is because I’ve seen with my own eyes what education can achieve”, she stated in Davos while receiving her award.

Her commitment with the development of the childhood is firm. “There’s nothing more exciting and satisfactory than watching a kid with very few opportunities to succeed, to arise and to develop in life. To me, this feeling overcomes winning a Grammy any time!”

And this feeling is one that Shakira knows very well since she launched her first album in 1995 in Colombia with an oficial studio title “Pies descalzos”, with which she obtained a notable success thanks to singles like “Estoy aquí”, “¿Dónde estás corazón?” Or “Antología”

[node:field_slideshow]

World Star

Before the record that would propel her musical career, Shakira had recorded “Magia” and “peligro” and she had performed in the Viña Del Mar International Song Festival (Chile) where she came in third place with the song “Eres” from 1993, and she was only 16.

That rocker and songwriter Shakira made as well her debut as an actress in a leading rol in 1994’s Colombian series “El Oasis”

“Ciega, sordomuda”, “Tú”, “Inevitable” and “Ojos Así” were the songs from her second album that played the most in the radio. “¿Dónde están los ladrones”, released in 1998, allowed her to jump into the European, Canadian and American markets.

With such success, MTV invited her to make one of their Unplugged a year later, making the Colombian artist the first Latino musician to ever record a live album for MTV, singing only in Spanish.

With Lebanese origins, her name means “thankful” and her mixed roots have been her identity mark as an artist, from the Latin rhythms to the belly dancing, a mixture that she demonstrated in “Laundry Service” (2001), her first English-singing album.

Her turn to English made her an international star with the bestseller album to this date, with songs like “Whenever Whenever”, “Underneath your clothes”, “Objection”, Te aviso, te anuncio”, “Que me quedes tú” or “Te dejo Madrid”.

Greatest Hits

Already enshrined as one of the biggest names in the international pop, her next album “Fijación Oral Vol. 1” was a comeback to her mother language and began her list of collaborations, including songs with Beyoncé, Miguel Bosé, Pitbull, Rihanna and Alejandro Sanz.

The record had a second part, this time completely in English: “Oral Fixation Vol. 2”, including one of her greatest hits “Hips don’t lie”, in collaboration with the rapper Wyclef Jean, that reached number one in the Billboard Hot 100 in America.

“She Wolf/Loba” (2009) and “Sale el Sol” (2010) where her next two works that confirmed her musical turn to dance music, away from her beginnings, with sons like “Loba”, “Loca”, “Rabiosa” or “Addicted to you”, beside her super hit “Waka Waka”.

Her homonymous album “Shakira” from 2014 is her last published work. Meanwhile, she has worked as businesswoman and TV star, in shows like “The Voice” in America. At the same time, she was the voice for one of the characters in the animated Disney film “Zootopia”.

But her most outstanding work lately has been her solidarity and her commitment to the access to education in early childhood, a subject that “passionates” her, specially since she became a mother herself, as she recognized in an interview before one of her interventions at the U.N. headquarters. 

“Education is not a luxury, is a human right since birth”, states the Latino artist who has been working for the past two decades to achieve it.