Don't Wait Up

Album: single release only (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Shakira details a relationship that has gone cold. The Colombian songstress admits to being moody while her lover is more interested in his phone than in communicating with her. Shakira needs some "me time," so she tells the dude she's going out for the night and "don't wait up" as she won't be back till late. She assures him she's not going out with another man but just needs some space.
  • Shakira co-wrote the upbeat house-influenced track with Emily Warren and Ian Kirkpatrick. Warren and Kirkpatrick also helped Dua Lipa pen her "New Rules" and "Don't Start Now" singles. "The day we came up with this in the studio, I knew it would be perfect for summer and those nights where you just want to not think about tomorrow," Shakira told Apple Music.
  • Shakira released the song on July 16, 2021 as the lead single from her upcoming 12th studio album. It was her first new solo song since the tracks on her 2017 album El Dorado. All the singles she dropped from that record were in Spanish; it was Shakira's first completely English single since she recorded "Try Everything" for the 2016 Walt Disney Animation Studios film Zootopia.
  • Director Warren Fu (Paramore, The 1975, The Strokes) filmed the video on the Spanish island of Tenerife in June 2021. The clip, which shows Shakira riding a glow-in-the-dark surfboard in the sea, took two months of preparation. Fu shot the scenes of the Latin superstar riding the waves between two and five in the morning.

    Shakira said she's "a chicken for cold water" unless she's got a full wetsuit, but the director wanted her to be in a bikini, which she refused to do because she doesn't consider herself fit anymore. The songstress insisted on wearing something that holds everything in properly, but compromised on showing some leg.

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