In this article: The singer and the Nobel Laureate

COVER STORY

Shakira it up with Shakira

By Gregory Katz

Devout Catholic schoolgirl. Check.
Goodwill ambassador to UNICEF. Check.
Belly-dancing alternative rocker. Check.
Shakira is all of the above and more.

"The stage is the only place where I feel uninhibited"

The Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner is a palatial 19th-century mansion buffed to perfection. It is one of London's most exquisite hotels, where guests are pampered with round-the-clock butler service, and it is filled on this late October afternoon with the sound of modern rock in crisis. In a downstairs lobby corner, a group of record company people are pounding their BlackBerrys and cellulars. A machine needed to transmit a precious new video for its scheduled world premiere is on the fritz. The star, meanwhile, is in her suite with a stomachache brought on, it seems, by anxiety.

This is pretty much the way it has been going for the past month with Shakira. The Colombian pop singer and songwriter flew in at 5 this morning from Barcelona, following an all-night shoot for her new video, "Don't Bother." It has been three to four hours of sleep per night max during the final stages of her recently released English-language album, "Oral Fixation Vol. 2." Tonight there is a rehearsal with her band; they have two live shows scheduled for the weekend. After that, Shakira will head to Denmark, Germany, Italy and Portugal for several TV and radio appearances.

"I'm a perfectionist in recovery," Shakira says a few hours later. "I'm trying to enjoy what I do." The stomachache has faded, and, by this time, "Don't Bother" is flickering on video channels everywhere. Still, her father, back home in Colombia, has been warning her to slow down. "My dad yelled at me today," she says. "He was like, 'You have to think of your health. You can't do this to yourself.' But this is a critical time. Everything needs to come together."

It usually does for Shakira. At 28, she already is one of the world's biggest female artists. Since her rock-influenced single "Donde Estas Corazon" launched her career in 1996, she has sold 25 million records worldwide. Her MTV "Unplugged" recording won a Grammy in 2000 for Best Latin Pop Album. "Laundry Service," her first English-language CD four years ago, debuted at No. 3 on the "Billboard" charts. She is so popular that Mattel introduced a line of Shakira dolls. One is outfitted with a faux leather vest, lace trim and a fringed belt; it, too, sold like hot cakes.

Even before her second English-language CD filled record store shelves last month, Shakira was having a good year. With the release of "Fijacion Oral Vol. 1" in June, she set a weekly sales record for Spanish-language albums. The single from that disc, a catchy reggaeton-tinged thumper called "La Tortura," is the No. 1 Spanish-language ring tone ever. When Shakira performed it in September at the MTV Video Music Awards in Miami, the stage was literally set on fire with pyrotechnics. The packed arena was probably too mesmerized to notice with Shakira doing a sultry belly dance across the stage. (Definitely not the version taught in Middle Eastern dance academies.)

"Believe it or not, I'm a very shy person," Shakira says during a 1 a.m. dinner break during rehearsal. She's dressed rock-star sloppy: faded jeans and a Psychedelic Furs T-shirt, her long blond hair tied in a bun. "The stage is the only place where I feel uninhibited. The audience becomes like a huge mirror in which I look at my feelings reflected and they respond to me. We become like one. That's the magic of a good performance."

Shakira speaks Spanish and Portuguese, and a few years ago she learned English in a recording studio from working musicians. "I'd love to learn more," she says. "Every language has its own beauty." In conversation, she is disarming, self-analytical and willing to talk about almost anything, except for her tabloid-fodder romance with Antonio de la Rua, once considered Argentina's most eligible bachelor. ("He spends a lot of time in New York," she says twice in as many breaths.) The couple, publicly linked since 2001, are now reportedly engaged. Two years ago, "we bought homes" in the Bahamas, where Shakira has converted her garage into a recording studio. "I like the tranquillity and peace of being on an island," she says. "It has that solitude that is so necessary for the creation of songs." In her off time, she tends to her flower garden and likes to grocery shop in her pajamas. "I have really cute PJs," she says, smiling.

Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born in Barranquilla, Colombia, an only child. Her mother is Colombian, her father (who had eight kids by his ex-wife) is Lebanese. They lived in a middle-class apartment. "It was a little like Manhattan, but Third World," she says of her native home. "I grew up among the Lebanese, Jewish and Italian communities."

Shakira's mom taught her about discipline, and her dad preached persistence. ("Whatever you start in life, finish it.") Her father has been publishing articles in the local paper for years, and the image of him in front of his typewriter strongly influenced Shakira as a child: "I wanted to be a writer, to follow in his footsteps. When I was 7, I asked Santa to bring me a typewriter."

She describes her father as an idealist, attracted to art and literature. "He always thought he could change the world with his articles. Every time he thinks about something, he writes it down and sends it to the newspaper. He's a character," she says with affection.

Shakira was drawn to the stage. She attended Catholic school and began writing songs at 8 and later choreographed dance routines: "I was known in school as 'the belly dancer girl' because every Friday I would do a number I learned. That's how I discovered my passion for live performance."

She says the nuns never objected to her show. "I always thought of belly dancing as a natural way for a woman to express her sensuality. I don't consider what I do to be sexual in a graphic way." She pauses. "But it is sexy. Maybe I put a little of that intention into it."

These are the two sides of Shakira: the good Catholic girl who serves as an official goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, and the Latin spitfire, heavily made up and in torn clothing, gyrating in front of an audience.

She may fit the mold of MTV vixen, but Shakira (who reportedly has an IQ of 140) has no interest in being the next Britney. For her upcoming world tour, she has decided to skip the personal trainer and masseur and instead made the surprising decision to hire a history professor for in-the-field tutorials. "We're getting someone on sabbatical," manager Ceci Kurzman says, "so that each place we go she can get a history lesson."

Shakira likes to do things her way. She both writes and produces her own music, a grab bag of pop, disco and rock steeped in Latin and Middle Eastern culture. Her love songs, in particular, are full of depth and emotion, but she's also edgy. "I grew up listening to Nirvana, Metallica and later on discovered Led Zeppelin, which, along with the Cure, is my favorite," Shakira says. She sees herself as an offspring of those rock pioneers. "I'm still looking for that one song that will completely seduce me. You know those bands -- Zeppelin, the Cure -- have conquered their dreams and written those magnificent songs all artists dream about. But I haven't yet. I'm still on that search."

Cover and cover story photographs by Antoine Verglas, Corbis Outline

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The Singer and the Nobel Laureate

They make an unlikely pair: Shakira, the model-gorgeous singer known for her scintillating videos and stage moves, and Gabriel García Márquez, the grand old man of Latin American letters who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

But the two have something in common. They are the most famous artists to emerge in recent decades from the colorful and embattled country of Colombia, and they share an allegiance to their native home and its culture, even though both have made their primary residences elsewhere.

The two form a mutual admiration society. Márquez, pioneer of the "magic realism" form of literature, wrote a glowing profile of Shakira in 1999 in which he lauded her innocent sensuality. Today Shakira calls Márquez "my friend" and speaks fondly of his novels, some of which are set in a fictionalized version of the place in which they grew up. Shakira's parents love Márquez's books as well, although she says her mom needed a list of characters to keep track of all the people in "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

-- Gregory Katz