Shakira may be a Latin Pop superstar, but she’s also a little bit country…
The 37-year-old Colombian singer and current The Voice coach has joined voices with Blake Shelton to record “Medicine,” a light-on-the-fiddle-and-steel country tune that could find success on pop radio.
“I told him I wanted to work with Nashville people,” Shakira told Billboard‘s Leila Cobo about the track that forms part of her latest studio effort, the self-titled album that will be released on March 25.
“I was a little tired of L.A. I wanted people with another point of view, real people with roots with whom I feel comfortable working in the same room. And I told Blake I wanted to do a song that had the narrative of a country song, that was picturesque, that was a real song. But it also needed to suit me, because after all, I’m Colombian.”
“I think I have real folk roots in my previous albums,” she added. “The acoustic guitars, that type of narrative, songs that have a traditional structure. And I said to [Shelton], ‘I want to do that type of song.’ When I wrote the song I didn’t know what direction to go in and I did like eight versions. Dance, pop…but I said no, this is a country song.”
Shakira worked on the song with writer Hillary Lindsey and producer Mark Bright – who both have collaborated with Carrie Underwood, among others.
“I think she did a hell of a job,” Shelton said. “One thing is for someone like her to say she’s going to do something and another is to do it. And I’ll be damned, a month and a half ago she wrote me and said, ‘I wrote the song, and I want you to tell me what you think.’ And I said: ‘Gosh dang, you did exactly what you said you’d do. It sounds like a hit song.’
“I was so nervous. You have no idea. I was so scared he was going to say, ‘No, Shakira. I love you, but no,'” recalled Shakira. “But then he said, ‘Sister, I love you this is great.’
“And then she said, ‘Well, do you want to sing on it?'” Shelton added. “I was honored to do it.”
Shakira and Shelton sang each other’s hits during the opener of this season’s February 24 premiere of The Voice, when Shakira performed a rocking version of “Boys Round Here,” and Shelton took a shot at Shakira’s “Whenever, Wherever,” on which she joined him for the chorus.
“She was one of those huge international stars I had only seen from a distance,” he said. “…And she feels like someone I had known my whole life. She’s motherly to everyone she meets. I love being around her and seeing how she treats the group of people who travel with her. She’s just a real person.”
