Cheating scandals: love to hear about them, would hate to be in one. With so much cheating news lately — ranging from Adam Levine’s cringey sexts to the Hans Niemann chess butt plug — it seems as if the hot gossip about cheating can’t get any more ridiculous, but oh how wrong we were. After a nearly 12 year-long relationship, Shakira and Spanish soccer player, Gerard Piqué, have separated. And I’m here to defend Shakira to my dying breath, for not only leaving an unhappy relationship, but also for making a banger song in the process.

Now this isn’t the freshest of celebrity love scandals, seeing as they announced their split in June of 2022, but their names have recently come back up in the tabloid news cycle following the release of Shakira’s latest song with Bizarrap. The song, “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53” came out on Jan 11, 2023 after a couple of songs like “Te Felicito” and “Monotonia” addressed the breakup. 

Shakira held back no punches in her latest song, coming after not only her ex-husband but his new girlfriend, Clara Chia Martí. as well. For those not up to date in Latin American pop culture or soccer, Piqué is a soccer player most widely known for playing for FC Barcelona and for being Shakira’s husband. However, with this song, one of those titles has been firmly stricken from his record. 

According to Cosmopolitan, Shakira became suspicious of things happening behind her back when she returned home from a trip to find that someone had eaten from a jar of jam in her fridge. To some film connoisseurs, this could be a sign that our favorite marmalade loving bear Paddington (another Latin American icon) could be making his return in a new film. But to Shakira, this was a sign that someone new had been inside her house since Piqué hates jam (a red flag already, but that’s for another article). 

For any Spanish speakers or avid users of Google Translate, you may have taken note of some of the fun word play going on in Shakira’s single. In the second verse of her diss track, Shakira sings “Yo solo hago música, perdón que te salpique,” meaning “I only make music, sorry that I splashed you” referencing the backlash that Gerard had been receiving from die-hard Shakira stans following the news. But she also takes an extended pause in this line, making “salpique” sound like “sal pique,” outwardly stating his name to avoid any potential confusion as to which cheater she may be referring to. 

She continues to berate Gerard in her song stating, “Me dejaste de vecina a la suegra / Con la prensa en la puerta y la deuda en Hacienda” meaning “You left me as a neighbor to my mother in law / With the press at the door and the debt in the Treasury.” Shakira is still currently living next door to her ex-mother in law, and news from MARCA claims that she has begun construction of a wall to separate their living spaces. Recently, as heard on Spanish twitter, Shakira has been said to have set up a Halloween witch statue/doll on the balcony facing her ex-mother in law’s house while also blasting her new song on repeat throughout the day. 

Shakira makes another pun during her chorus, singing, “Tiene nombre de persona buena / Claramente no es como suena,” meaning “She’s got the name of a good person / Clearly she’s not how I’d hoped.” Beyond just outwardly calling Clara a bad person, Shakira also does a pause when singing “Claramente,” making it sound like “Clara mente,” putting yet another name drop in the song. 

And now to the pettiest section of the song: Shakira sings “Yo valgo por dos de 22 / Cambiaste un Ferrari por un Twingo / Cambiaste un Rolex por un Casio,” meaning “I’m worth two of 22 / You changed a Ferrari for a Twingo / You changed a Rolex for a Casio.” Piqué seemed to have taken a liking to this section of the song, as soon after he was spotted driving a Twingo to practice and wearing a Casio watch on his podcast. The response came as quite a surprise to many, since it typically takes a lot more than one line in a song to get a rich man away from his fancy cars. 

While the media continues to circle on this drama until eventually the next celebrity controversy comes up, I’m here to say that Shakira continues to defend her title of pop culture icon, releasing banger after banger. And in this cycle of romantic ruin, break up songs may be making a comeback that we have not expected, only now Taylor Swift might not be the face of break-ups.