If you enter the Spotify profile of Shakira, you will see that in the top 5, now overcoming ‘blackmail’ and even the Bizarrap session, there is a song that does not have a video clip and that was fifth! Single (when there were quintos singles) of his official debut, ‘barefoot’, back in 1995. It is ‘anthology’, which a few days ago became the first theme of a Spanish singer in the last century to exceed 500 million views in Spotify. The Colombian has left a megahit minimum in four different decades, and has managed to stay relevant for different generations, but this data remains impressive. Although, for impressive, the fact that he wrote ‘anthology’ with 17 years. What are we doing with our lives?
‘Anthology’ emerged from the relationship that the singer lived with businessman Oscar Ulloa and, like the rest of ‘bare feet’, is composed of Shakira and produced with Luis Fernando Ochoa, with whom he made the album staying “until three in the morning in the studio every night,” according to the artist in a recent interview with GQ.
Production is not the remarkable thing about ‘anthology’, and I admit that it does not have much complexity. But that simplicity, in my opinion, plays in favor, something that looks much better in the lyrics … that is what makes this song so much. Shakira has always been a great lyricist, capable of mixing the ñoño with humor and desire, and ‘anthology’ was a precursor of large ballads that would later publish, like ‘flies in the house’, ‘that you stay’, ‘before six’, or the recent ‘acrostic’.
The song has a strange structure, with changing choruses that are almost more stanzas, and, in the manner of Rafael Pérez Botija for Massiel’s ‘love’, it uses metaphors to explain something so indescribable. ‘Anthology’, yes, it does not go to the epic but to the earth, also adding innocence with specific anecdotes of Shakira that manage to be universal. In fact, I might not mention the word “love” throughout the subject, and, even so, we would continue to know what it refers to when it says “I learned what a rose means” or “I learned to take the second time.” The innocence of the first love is present when Shakira discovers that you can “replace words with looks” or when you affirm “you take off my shoes / to escape both flying for a while.” If ‘Anthology’ was thrown today, we would see in Tiktok photomontages of couples with that back of the background, as has happened with ‘DTMF’.
So beautiful it was what he felt and so beautiful is how he describes that, although in the second stanza Shakira tries to name problems or less positive aspects (“lies”, “mistakes”, “not adequate”), we hardly realize. We even forget how the song begins: speaking of this love as something that ended. ‘Anthology’ is Shakira talking about a love that no longer exists. Or maybe yes? Perhaps that is what we extract from that song: the relationship will have ended, but love does not die. Which sounds beautiful but is also painful: demonizing the person is sadder, but it is true that it helps “overcome it.”
That pain is mentioned by Shakira at the beginning of ‘anthology’; The song is also she wondering if, as much as he felt everything he describes, it is worth it, when the break can then come and bring him so much pain. And that the end is “it was for you that I discovered what it is to love” in loop … it is a good answer to that question. Because the truth is that connecting someone really is tremendously difficult, let’s not say, not to “be in love”). Trust, admire, care for and love someone so much, and that all this is corresponded … It is almost a miracle to experience it. That is why, although it has ended, if there is someone who comes to mind when Shakira sings “it was for you who discovered what it is to love”, you can feel fortunate. I don’t know if ‘Anthology’ is Shakira’s best song, but, without a doubt, it is one of the most special.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNGVM4H8JQK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwgvrk_ggww
