Awards

Shakira at Billboard’s Latin Women in Music Gala: “Finding Someone Faithful Is Less Important Than Being Faithful to Ourselves”

The new resident of Miami also attended the Formula 1 Grand Prix with Tom Cruise and other stars.
Shakira at Billboards Latin Women in Music Gala “Finding Someone Faithful Is Less Important Than Being Faithful to...
From Natalia Aguilera/Billboard via Getty Images

Shakira’s new life in Miami is off to the races. 

The performer joined the who’s who of Formula 1 and its enthusiasts this weekend, and also accepted the first Billboard Woman of the Year Award at the inaugural Latin Women in Music Gala at the Watsco Center. She moved to the 305 from Barcelona to start a “new chapter” last month

On Saturday, while accepting the Billboard award, Shakira, newly single and off of a wildly popular breakup single, “Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” stayed on theme in her speech. “This has been a year of seismic change in my life where I’ve felt more than ever and very personally what it is to be a woman, and what it means,” she said in Spanish, according to Billboard. “It’s been a year where I’ve realized we women are stronger than we think, braver than we believed, more independent than we were taught to be. Because what woman hasn’t at some time in her life forgotten herself because she’s seeking the attention and love of someone else?”

Shakira and Gerard Piqué, formerly her partner of over a decade, issued a joint statement announcing their split in June of last year. Since then, rumored details from their breakup made the rounds, in part because Shakira alluded to them in her breakup album. “You left me with your mom as a neighbor,” she sings in Spanish in “Vol. 53,” “The press at my door, and a debt with the treasury / You thought you’d hurt me, but you made me stronger / Women no longer cry, women get paid / You traded in a Ferrari for a Twingo / You traded in a Rolex for a Casio.”

In January, Piqué posted a photo on Instagram of himself and his girlfriend amid rumors that the relationship had gone on prior to his breakup with Shakira, with Shakira finding out, according to the rumor, because someone had eaten jam in her fridge while she was away from home—and neither Piqué nor his children with Shakira, Sasha and Milan, liked the jam

Shakira made no mention of jam and did not call out Piqué by name in her speech. Instead, she alluded to “seismic change” in the last calendar year of her life, and said that “finding someone who is faithful” doesn’t matter as much as one’s faithfulness to oneself. Besides the messy breakup, in the last year she’s dealt with her father’s declining health as well as a tax evasion case in Spain in which she denies all wrongdoing; her representatives say she has repaid the tax debt the Spanish treasury is claiming.

“There comes a time in the life of every woman where she no longer depends on someone else to love and accept herself just as she is,” she continued in her speech. “A time when the search for someone else is replaced by the search for oneself. A time when the desire to be perfect is replaced by the desire to be authentic, and where finding someone faithful is less important than being faithful to ourselves.”

She shouted out her mother, Nidia Ripoll, who has reportedly been dealing with her own health challenges. “Mami, despite the hardships you’ve faced this year, you’re still standing with limitless love and resilience,” she said. “You, Mami, have been my woman of the year.”

On Sunday, Shakira was photographed with Tom Cruise at the Formula 1 Grand Prix. She joined a number of stars at the event including Ludacris, Vin Diesel, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, DJ Khaled, Michelle Rodriguez, Will.i.am, and L.L. Cool J. 

Not bad for a weekend in America’s preferred tax haven