AND I'M LIKE...!!!

Forget pottery wheels and pie baking, this was something on an entirely different level. 

The listen was pure jubilation.  It was so great I experienced incredibly strong urges to dig my nails into my arms and shoulder blades and in particular my wrists in the rich vulnerable veins.  I also wanted to run around the room and slam my head repeatedly into the walls until blood gushed from a thousand wounds and painted the carpet and furniture a stark red.  My ears reached the peak of aural excitement and they ejaculated all over my pea coat and the stacks of paperwork sitting idly by waiting to be processed.  I began grinding my teeth with a vice like strength until my fillings shattered and several molars were dislodged, tearing my throat in ragged swaths on their way down to my acid filled gut.  I then sank the sharpened remains of my chompers into my soft silver tongue and a scarlet river of pain filled my mouth.  My eyes welled up with tears and my body continued its macabre gesticulations like a dog just hit by a car and going into mad, unbridled convulsions.  I opened my mouth to scream along with the song at the top of my burning lungs and blood and vomit gushed out in a guttural, almost otherworldly roar.  I tried to sing along but the lack of teeth and tongue gravely affected my pronunciation and projection and I was left only able to growl and grimace along with the basic rhythm. 

I know my prose can sometimes seem a bit on the vague and undefined side so I have opted to share a few words of a clearer persuasion.  The rich description presented here is a bit late.  In fact it’s so late I briefly considered making a delectable breakfast of bacon, eggs and plantains for my talking horse Fredericks who lives out in a barn 5 miles west of my posh flat that I built one lazy summer afternoon after making love like a rabbit to my high school sweetheart of 19 years.  I am of course talking about the release of Shakira’s song “Empire”.  Dedicated followers of my work will no doubt note I never fulfilled my promise of reviewing the first single from the album.  To those die-hards I would only say one thing: it’s coming…the moment you’ve been waiting for is coming….  Cleverly sandwiched between this Monday night post and the eventual album review will be my thoughts on the first single.  However here is where I choose to discuss the aforementioned second song released from the disc (ostensibly a promotional single) in terms of my initial gut reaction.  Here we sit on the eve of the album release and my excitement is as sweaty and feverish as it always is for a new release from one of my favorite artists. 

This song essentially exploded from my blue collar office job speakers and blew my face off as though I were gleefully using a hand grenade for a pacifier.  This is the explosive Arena Rock Shakira – always one of my favorite sides of her.  Having dutifully avoided any leaks or pirated copies I still do not know what to expect from the remainder of the album (though I have heard it is a bit more ballad centric) though this track is definitely an early contender for a favorite of the disc.  It immediately called to mind “Devocion” from 2010’s Sale El Sol, a song which I famously described as the most rocking tune of that year (and this was the same year when Iron Maiden’s epic album The Final Frontier was released) and I would give it the same much coveted Branden Instant Classic status I gave to David Bowie’s “Valentine’s Day” back in the early spring of 13’.  That’s right!  Shakira’s “Empire” has earned the first official Branden Instant Classic of 2014!  Hopefully the musical landscape will be so rich this year that I will award many more to the point where billions of songs share that title!  Other giant rocking Shaki songs this recalls for me are “Poem to a Horse” from 2001’s Laundry Service and – dare I say it? – “Inevitable” from 1998’s Donde Estan Los Ladrones.  All right, it’s not as good as “Inevitable” but very few things in the history of mankind even approach that one.  Still, it’s a testament to my love of this song that I would even make such a comparison.  Time will tell where this song and album with ultimately reside in my musical and Shakira heart.  For now I can at least say I bleeping love this song and the bit that starts the chorus – the very title of this post – slays me with its brutal excellence. 

Oh sweet melodic ecstasy, oh divine harmony of heaven.  How unexpected in the beginning, the palette so different from what I was accustomed.  Yet the wine flowed and its color was the shade of intimacy and its scent a bouquet of passion.  There were so many stairs spiraling up a tower of heated desire.  Oceanic pools which offered dreams of swimming through the very act of creation and witnessing the wonder as it unfolds.  I dared not to approach for I knew to taste from this most forbidden of fruits would certainly leave my soul in a state of perpetual decay and my body casted out from the circle and rendered pariah across the lands.  And yet, temptations arose with new sounds and sights.  The numbers came forth then and it was a delirium to be measured in numerals of four, everything increasing and flowing and reaching.  And then the euphoria, together in a moment with our waves crashing on eternity’s shores; fantasy at once made flesh yet born again pulsing with new and precious life.  There was love and the singular desire to be swept away, gentle as a single tear of joy and powerful enough to create a universe.  I saw it all and would never be the same; a visage to part the seas and a caress to make the heart surrender forever.  Side by side, breathing in the rapture, our spirits played together in the skies above and I was lost inside her song.  To quote Mebarak, “And my agnosticism turned into dust”.