On Wednesday, T-Mobile held a special event in Bryant Park in NYC to unveil their latest innovation in the mobile phone market. The big announcement was that the company will be rolling out 4G LTE service to their customers over the next year, and they will be doing away with roaming charges effectively making it so that T-Mobile customers can travel across the world and not have to be worried about their phones not working or paying exorbitant amounts of money to make them work. It's a huge innovation for sure, but everyone in the crowd was there for someone else: Latin sensation, Shakira! Music superstar Shakira is T-Mobile's spokesperson, promoting the company across the world while T-Mobile will most likely promote Shakira's long-awaited new album from which the debut single is set to drop in November. I was one of the lucky few to get a free ticket to the show, and it was awesome!
The special guest opening act was none other than New York native, Swizz Beatz. He came on to get the party started, but unfortunately, the crowd wasn't into it. Part of the problem was that Swizz is of course a hip-hop/rap artist so that is most of what his DJing consisted of, and it wasn't a huge hit among the Shakira fans. Some people were into it, but most were bored. There were even times, about halfway into his set, when people just stopped paying attention to him and had conversations amongst themselves. The crowd went nuts when he played songs like Avicii's '
Wake Me Up' or (in particular) Lana Del Rey's '
Summertime Sadness (Cedric Gervais Remix)' but otherwise Swizz was being ignored. And what made matters worse was that he was on stage for far too long. At one point they showed a back view from the stage and the teleprompter said "please wrap up," but Swizz ignored it and played for another fifteen minutes. He was on as long as Shakira was (if not an extra five minutes longer) which was not ok since he was just the opener. At the end he played 'Empire State of Mind' for his wife, Alicia Keys, which got the crowd amped, but overall Swizz was just not welcome.
Finally Shakira came on, and she absolutely killed it. I've never seen Shakira in person before so this was my first time. I was actually pretty close to the stage, close enough to where I could see her face clearly enough that I didn't have to look at the video screens if I didn't want to. She kicked off the show with none other than her debut English-language hit 'Whenever, Wherever' which got the crowd singing along. It's great because she sounds the same live as she does on her records, and the dancing was on par. She then moved on to 'Underneath Your Clothes' which is one of her older mid-tempos. It kept with the nostalgic theme of Shak's career, and then she picked up the pace with 'Loca'. Bringing us up to speed with her most recent hit, 'Loca' was a crowd favorite and got everyone dancing, as well as Shakira herself. She did her thang, flanked by back-up dancers.
Keeping it moving with the up tempos, Shakira then performed one of my favorite songs, 'She Wolf'. The song started off with a really cool intro, and then Shakira pulled out all the stops as her and her dancers pulled out their inner wolves and gave a fierce performance. It also included Shak howling, which the crowd joined in on. To slow things down a bit, she sang 'Inevitable' which is one of her Spanish songs from before she became an international star. She brought out her guitar and gave a beautiful and moving vocal performance. It was nice to see her show off her vocal range, and the crowd really got into it.
For her "final" song, she performed her signature hit 'Hips Don't Lie'. This song has defined Shakira's music career, and she gave it the spotlight. The song started off with a cool intro, and then the pyrotechnics and lights went crazy, lighting the stage on fire as Shakira swung those hips back and forth, at one point even going into a back bend. The song went on for almost six minutes, giving us fans what we wanted. It was a huge spectacle. How could she top that? Well, with 'Waka Waka'. Before singing the song, she told us that if it weren't for this song she would never have met her husband and had her baby so this is a special song for her, and of course the message is a great one that lends itself to being a finale track. It was another huge spectacle, and it brought with it a great sense of community and just plain happiness. Shakira wowed everyone, and it was a fantastic concert. I would definitely pay money to go to one of her shows, and for a free concert, this wasn't bad at all!
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| This was my view from where I was standing |
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