“It was an unconventional song, one that almost didn’t get released,” Shakira told Billboard in 2016 of her 2006 smash “Hips Don’t Lie.”
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Five years after she scored her first top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit, “Whenever, Wherever,” the Colombian singer’s second English-language album, 2005’s Oral Fixation, Vol. 2, got off to a rocky start when the lead single, “Don’t Bother,” stalled at No. 42 on the chart.
Instead of choosing a second single from the album, Shakira went back into the studio and, working with former Fugee Wyclef Jean, cowrote a new track, “Hips Don’t Lie,” that embraced her roots, “cumbia and typical Colombian folkloric instrumentation,” she told Billboard.
Shakira was so confident with the results that, she said, “I called up the head of my record label [Sony] and told him, ‘I’ve never made a request like this, but you need to recall all the albums I’ve just released and repackage them to include this new song. It’s a song that’s going to change everything.’ ”
The LP, with “Hips Don’t Lie” added, was rereleased on March 28, 2006, and Shakira’s prediction proved true. Vol. 2 vaulted from No. 98 to No. 6 on the Billboard 200 dated that April 15, and the sensual “Hips Don’t Lie” did even better. The single, which was heavily based on Jean’s 2004 solo track “Dance Like This,” became both artists’ first (and, to date, only) Hot 100 No. 1 when it topped the June 17, 2006, chart. It reigned for two weeks overall.
To date, “Hips Don’t Lie” has rung up lofty totals of 2.1 billion in radio airplay audience, 1.4 billion official streams and 4 million in digital sales in the United States, according to Luminate. Also thanks to its eight-week command on Hot Latin Songs, it helped Shakira rank in the top 10 on Billboard’s Top Latin Artists of the 21st Century spotlight.
Plus, in 2025, Shakira received the inaugural Billboard Global Touring Icon Award in honor of her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour.
For Shakira, the success of “Hips Don’t Lie” was “validation that I didn’t have to sacrifice any part of what makes me different to connect with a global audience.”
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