Hips Don't Lie - Background

Background

"Hips Don't Lie" was reportedly commissioned by Sony Music to revive sales of Shakira's flagging album Oral Fixation Vol. 2, which had come out in late 2005 in time for the lucrative Christmas-buying season. Vol. 2 was Shakira's second album of the year, directly following the Spanish-language Fijación Oral Vol. 1 by less than six months. (As part of a small trend in 2005, Shakira joined Sony label mates System of a Down in releasing two back-to-back albums of new material in a single calendar year.) Ironically, in the crucial U.S. market, Vol. 1 – for which Sony likely had lower expectations given the album's late-spring release and non-English content – actually sold better than Vol. 2, Shakira's first English-language album since her breakthrough Laundry Service four years earlier. Despite its release in a slower sales period of the year, Vol. 1 had bigger first-week sales than Vol. 2 (157,000 copies vs. 128,000), charted higher (#4 – a rare ranking for a Spanish album – vs. #5) and produced a genuine hit single in the #23 hit "La Tortura" with Alejandro Sanz, while Vol. 2's leadoff single "Don't Bother" stalled just outside the Top 40. Vol. 2 was too important a project for Epic, so around the start of 2006 they asked Wyclef Jean to remake his own song with Shakira and give the album a crucial radio hit – a tactic that proved a tremendous success: When Vol. 2 was re-released in March 2006 with "Hips Don't Lie" (plus an alternate version of "La Tortura"), the album shot up 92 spots on the Billboard 200, representing a one-week sales increase of 643 %. As of November 2007, the album has sold close to 2 million copies in the United States, more than half of them the re-release containing "Hips Don't Lie."

"Hips Don't Lie" debuted on the L.A.-based radio station KIIS-FM (on the Ryan Seacrest Morning Show) on February 14, 2006. Shakira and Wyclef Jean performed the song on the following TV shows: American Idol, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Live With Regis and Kelly, The Today Show, Total Request Live, and the 2007 Grammy Awards. The song can be heard in the EA Sports video game MVP 06 NCAA Baseball, the film soundtrack to Ice Age: The Meltdown, and on MySpace records. soundtrack on 27 Dresses.

The use of the opening trumpets caused a small controversy, when Jerry Rivera openly accused Shakira of plagiarizing the opening trumpets without his knowing, though saying he would not press charges on her. However, rights had been obtained from the copyright owner and Rivera's name acknowledged in the album's booklet.

Less than two weeks after its debut on KIIS, Z100 added the track, and less than a week after it was added to the playlist, it was the most requested song on the station as it hit #1 on the "Interactive 9@9". It stayed on top for about a month. In December 2006 it was announced that "Hips Don't Lie" was the #1 song of the year, a first for both Shakira and Wyclef Jean.

A Spanish version entitled "Será, Será (Las Caderas No Mienten)" was also released. Shakira also sang another version (produced by RedOne) called "Hips Don't Lie/Bamboo" at the closing ceremony of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Berlin, Germany.