Songfacts®:

• Here, The Black Eyed Peas join forces with Shakira to pay tribute to Latin women. The Peas and Shakira originally recorded the demo for the sexy and seductive song back in 2008. The track failed to make the final cut for their 2009 The E.N.D album, as it didn't fit in with the other material.
  
  The Will.i.am-fronted group and Shakira eventually redid the bilingual song in 2020 for the Translation album. They released it as the record's fifth single on December 4, 2020.
• This was the first time The Black Eyed Peas had worked with Shakira. Will.i.am told Billboard how he was inspired by the Colombian star's attention to detail. He gave this example of a note she supplied while working on the song:
  
  "When you say that word, can you swing that back a little bit? When I say, 'Girl like me,' the tail end of the reverb, can you make it just a little bit louder?"
  
  "This girl is the definition of music," Will.i.am said. "I've worked with everybody - Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson. I've never experienced that detail. And she conducts the session like she's teaching!"
• Taboo makes reference to Shakira's 2006 song "Hips Don't Lie" during his verse.
  
  Your hips don't lie, they rock me
• Will.i.am and Shakira produced the track with Yonatan "Johnny" Goldstein. The Israeli multi-platinum record producer and songwriter produced 12 of the Translation tracks including the singles "Mamacita" and "Vida Loca."
• Filmed in September 2020, the video features Shakira showing off her skateboarding skills, a hobby she picked up over the 2020 summer. The Colombian is accompanied by backup dancers doing aerobics; the clip also shows the Peas singing the song in front of various set pieces. Shakira told Billboard:
  
  "Some of the takes in this video were at three or four in the morning and I was skating for like two hours so they could capture the best shots. I skated and skated and skated, until I didn't feel my joints."
• The part in the video where Shakira is dancing in a leotard sparked a challenge on TikTok, with the Colombian's millions of followers trying to imitate her bouncy choreography.
• The actress Jane Fonda took up aerobics in 1978 to stay in shape after having to give up ballet because of an injury. This led to the 17 million-selling Jane Fonda's Workout video series. Shakira told Billboard the "Girl Like Me" music clip was inspired by Fonda's '80s exercise videos.
  
  "The song already has that vintage quality to it, so I wanted a video that had the retro futuristic vibe," she explained. "From the beginning I thought: Jane Fonda. Those '80s workout videos had a really cool aesthetic I wanted to import into this video."