MIAMI – For Colombian pop star Shakira, 2022 was a year of heartbreak.

She broke up with Spanish soccer player Gerard Pique, her partner for 11 years and the father of her two sons, Milan and Sasha. Her father was hospitalised twice for a fall that caused head trauma; he went on to require further brain surgery in 2023.

Shakira was also facing charges of tax evasion in a long-running case disputing whether she had lived primarily in Spain from 2012 to 2014. She had declared residency there in 2015.

In November 2023, she settled for a fine of €7.5 million (S$10.9 million).

Just days earlier, Shakira had collected the Latin Grammy for song of the year for Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53, a collaboration with Argentine producer Bizarrap with wordplay clearly aimed at Pique and his girlfriend.

The song was one of a string of singles Shakira released that referred directly to the break-up: the sarcastic Te Felicito (I Congratulate You); the regretful Monotonia (Monotony); and Acrostico, a ballad promising her children that she would stay strong.

Those songs reappear on Shakira’s first album since 2017, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (Women No Longer Cry), released on March 22.

The LP continues Shakira’s career-long penchant for pulling together music and collaborators from across the Americas, dipping into rock, electro-pop, trap, Dominican bachata, Nigerian-style Afrobeats, and regional Mexican cumbia and polka.

She spoke about the album from her white-walled kitchen at her home in Miami, where an air-fryer sat on the counter behind her. A pet bunny in a pen was at her side. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Does the album tell a story? In the first songs, you’re wondering how to hold on to someone. But by the end, you’re pretty angry.

There is a narrative. It’s a conceptual album without it being my initial intention. You know, no one plans on going through a break-up the way I did. And the dissolution of a family – that is probably one of the most painful things a human can experience. But it happened.

If life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. That’s what I did with this album – use my own creativity to process my frustration, anger and sadness. I transmuted or transformed pain into productivity.

The album title, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, comes from the song that confronts the break-up most specifically: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53.

Crying will always be a mechanism of survival for human beings. It’s an important part of living. And I feel like women today, we don’t need to be told how we’re supposed to heal, how we’re supposed to lick our wounds. We are the ones who have to move on and preserve our species, preserve the survival of our offspring – of the she-wolves that we are.

Did your popularity help get you through those rough years?

I not only had to face the dissolution of my family, but I also had to do it with the journalists at my doorstep, with people talking about it, with me learning stuff from the press myself. It was extremely painful.

But my fans just know me and understand me and forgive my mistakes, and they support me, whatever decisions I make. They have shown me the best version of myself, and they made me believe that I’m worth it and that I should go on. You know, them and my kids have definitely been the biggest help, the biggest support I’ve got.

And then my dad had a terrible accident that left him compromised neurologically. He has always been my best friend, so he wasn’t there to give me his best advice when I needed him the most. So it was a period of extreme pain. Only writing the songs allowed me to rebuild myself.

Through the years, you’ve done all sorts of duets and collaborations, and you have many more on this album. How do you decide who gets to make a song with Shakira?

It’s not a premeditated process. I think every song has its own demands. For Punteria (Aiming), I thought, “How cool would it be to have a woman rapper here?” The only person who came to my mind was Cardi B. I had just met her in Paris, and she seemed so nice. So I reached out, I sent her the song and she jumped on it right away. It was an enormous pleasure to work with her. I find her so creative and witty and direct and unapologetically genuine.

Ultima feels like one of the most emotionally exposed songs on the album – full of feelings about regret and memories and deciding not to go back.

It was the last song that came on the album, and that’s why I called it The Last One. We had all the tracks completed, but I was like, no, no, I can’t close this album. I’m going to choke on this song. This one is stuck here, it’s a cyst, I need to get it out.

So, I just went in the studio, produced it and wrote it, and I finished it and sang it in one day. And it’s also the last song that I plan on writing about you know who and the one that shouldn’t be named: Voldemort. NYTIMES