Review: Shakira’s Charlotte show was a long time coming. Was it worth the wait?
It was starting to seem like Shakira might never make it to the stage in Charlotte.
We’re talking specifically about Tuesday night, at Bank of America Stadium, as the clock ticked past 9 p.m. — 9:02, 9:03, 9:04 — as fans’ necks grew weary from having spent practically every second of the previous 30 minutes craning them, believing the hit-making Latin diva was thisclose to kicking off the show.
But it had also been seeming like Shakira might never make it here in a larger sense, too. Over the course of nearly three decades and six world tours prior, she had never performed in Charlotte.
Or anywhere in North Carolina. Or anywhere in South Carolina, for that matter.
Then in April 2024, she announced her “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour” would include Spectrum Center in Charlotte in November. The long wait for the Carolinas appeared to be almost over. Except it wasn’t.
Last October, on only a month’s notice, that engagement was pushed back by half a year and rebooked for BofA Stadium.
In the meantime, during the first run of shows in South America earlier this year, the tour experienced its share of not-insignificant hiccups. Shakira canceled her concert in Lima, Peru due to an illness; and three other shows were postponed because of various concerns related to the venues.
So the anticipation in uptown in the hours before her set — which marked the first concert on the North American leg of her tour in addition to making her the first Latin artist and just the second woman (after Beyoncé in 2023) to headline BofA — was palpable.
Pedicabs careened between skyscrapers blasting reggaeton and carrying giddy groups of fans to Mint and Graham streets, where vendors hawked tacos and arepas, and Spanish felt an awful lot like the most prevalent language being spoken.
In fact, the area on Tuesday boasted a distinctly Latin flavor, similar to the one achieved when it hosted two matches of the CONMEBOL Copa América tournament last July, this time with fútbol jerseys representing Uruguay and Colombia replaced by purple wigs (like the one Shakira made famous in the 2007 music video for “Las de la Intuición”) and wolf-ears headbands (inspired by Shakira’s she-wolf alter ego).
And these fans came prepared in more ways than one. They also knew, for instance, the show was to open with the singer making her grand entrance via a midfield tunnel, with her wading through the crowd to get to the catwalk.
As the clock kept ticking past 9:05, 9:06, 9:07, the crowd kept getting antsier.
But finally, mercifully, at 9:08, the lights dimmed to signal the long wait had ended, and that the celebration of Shakira’s songs — and her seemingly eternal youth — had begun.
Shaky start for Shakira’s show, then ...
Things didn’t exactly get off to the smoothest of starts.
Her special-guest opener, Wyclef Jean of the Fugees, failed his initial geography test by loudly and repeatedly shouting out “South Carolina” before being corrected internally mid-set; the 55-year-old rapper/singer cheekily tried to turn “I know I said ‘South Carolina’ / I want you to excuse me / I’m in North Carolina” into a rapped song, but it just seemed to underline the awkwardness of his mistake.
Then over an hour later, after the extended wait to get the main set going, Shakira’s dramatic intro video — in which an AI-rendered likeness of the singer collapsed in the desert and disintegrated before pulling herself up out of the sand and putting herself back together — was derailed by a technical difficulty.
Instead of cutting to a live-video feed of her fan-friendly entrance, the 160-foot screen displayed a test card with colored bars. Fans who’d seemed to know exactly what was going to happen suddenly didn’t know what was going on.
Once Shakira came into full view after climbing the stairs up to the catwalk, however, for the next two hours, virtually every move she made hit the mark.
She nailed the setlist, touching on everything from her earliest successes (like mid-’90s hits “Estoy Aquí” and “Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos”) to her most recent (like “Acróstico” and “Última,” both off her 2024 album), as well as all of her most-well-known English-language material (including “Underneath Your Clothes,” which wasn’t part of her sets in South America).
In addition to the liberal use of AI-generated imagery on the big screen, she created eye-popping real-world visual effects: the welding-helmet-wearing, welding-torch-wielding body double that went to work on the “robot” backup dancer during “Te felicito”; the 30-foot-tall wolf that emerged from the darkness and loomed over the stage during “She Wolf”; and the always-on, color-changing LED bracelets that made it difficult to take a wider-angle photo or video of any song that didn’t look dazzling thanks to the thousands of dancing, twinkling lights.
As for her wardrobe, there were a dozen costumes in all (I think? I may have lost count), with standouts including the bright and colorful cut-out, stringed pieces in “Waka Waka” and the custom-molded, wolf-inspired breastplate she paired with a stunning skirt sculpted to look like blue ocean waves (worn as she sang the ballad “Acróstico”). We even got to go backstage with her, via camera feed, to watch her sing “Chantaje” while she swapped dresses.
She also rewarded Charlotte for hosting the launch of the North American leg with guest spots by Wyclef (on their duet “Hips Don’t Lie,” now 20 years old) and Alejandro Sanz (on their collab “La tortura,” also 20). They won’t join her in most other cities.
But while both those songs qualified as showstoppers, the most electric moments of the night were Shakira’s and Shakira’s alone.
At age 48, Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ still
A lot’s changed culturally since 2006, when “Hips Don’t Lie” — which became an across-the-board number-one smash and catapulted the then-28-year-old Colombian singer to superstardom — leaned heavily on her sex appeal. It was so overt as to be almost cartoonish.
Two decades later, society has markedly different attitudes toward women now, and toward female sexuality, and in terms of the way it’s acceptable to regard a woman’s body.
Yet she really hasn’t changed her overall style of dress or movement at all, hasn’t tried to mute her raciness in the slightest.
You might remember, as recently as five years ago, Shakira and fellow pop queen Jennifer Lopez spent their time as stars of the Super Bowl halftime show pole-dancing, twerking, belly-dancing and striking sexually suggestive poses. Some TV viewers were none too happy; the FCC received more than a thousand complaints from those who found the performances shocking and offensive.
Tuesday night, however, there were no complaints whatsoever as she delivered more of the same to tens of thousands of her fans.
During “Soltera,” for instance, she writhed playfully on and around a pole built into a giant “S” in the middle of the stage. During “Addicted to You,” she pawed lustily at her chest and made exaggerated undulations with her bare stomach. During “Copa Vacía,” she turned her back to the audience, leaned on her mic stand, and swished and gyrated seductively as her hips were simulcast onto that 160-foot screen, and for “Ojos así” she put on a veritable sexy-belly-dancing clinic.
It doesn’t seem cartoonish anymore, though. It seems empowering and inspiring.
Part of that might be the messages she included along the way Tuesday night. “I’ve learned ... a fall isn’t the end, but it could be the beginning of an even better journey.” “If there’s something I know for sure it’s that us women, every time we fall, we rise up stronger. We rise up a little wiser.” “You can be happy single or married, as long as you feel free, right? Because loving someone else is beautiful, but self-love is even more beautiful.”
Part of that — probably a big part — is that she’s now 48 years old but looks and moves like her 28-year-old self, something all of us in middle age aspire to.
Despite it being pretty humid in uptown for her show, I never saw a drop of sweat. Despite only slowing down for the handful of ballads she sang, she never appeared to be out of breath.
Will Shakira be able to do this forever?
I don’t know. But hopefully we can get her to come back to Charlotte again someday, so we can at least watch her try.
Shakira’s setlist
1. “La fuerte”
2. “GIRL LIKE ME”
3. “Las de la intuición” / “Estoy aquí”
4. “Empire” / “Inevitable”
5. “Te felicito” / “TQG”
6. “Don’t Bother”
7. “Acróstico”
8. “Copa Vacía” / “La bicicleta” / “La tortura”
9. “Hips Don’t Lie”
10. “Chantaje”
11. “Monotonía”
12. “Addicted to You” / “Loca”
13. “Soltera”
14. “Última”
15. “Ojos así”
16. “Pies descalzos, sueños blancos”
17. “Antología”
18. “Objection (Tango)“
19. “Underneath Your Clothes”
20. “Whenever, Wherever”
21. “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)”
Encore:
22. “She Wolf”
23. “BZRP Music Sessions #53”
This story was originally published May 14, 2025 at 9:35 AM.
