Shakira dazzles at Little Caesars Arena as world tour brings reenergized star to Detroit

Yahoo

23-05-2025

Shakira landed in Detroit and promptly dropped a vigorous, vivacious, sparkling eruption of energy onto Little Caesars Arena.
Thursday night at the sold-out downtown venue, the Colombian superstar wowed in a hardworking, two-hour-plus set that took fans on a global journey of sounds and dance numbers while revisiting three decades of music.
It was a night of elaborate, eyepopping stagecraft, ever-changing wardrobe and fanciful set pieces, with Shakira a dynamic presence at the center of it all. With lithe and curvy moves to lead the show's tight choreography — the hips do still tell the truth — the 48-year-old seemed emboldened and recharged.
As the latest stop on her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour, this was the third Detroit show of her career and first in seven years, playing off themes of vulnerability, strength and perseverance.
After a 2024 tour reboot — Shakira was originally scheduled here in December — LCA was a rare arena date on a tour that has been playing massive fútbol and football stadiums, thus offering a relatively intimate experience for Detroit fans. (An official attendance count was not released, but the full-capacity crowd appeared to number about 13,000.)
And so a gargantuan production got crammed into the Detroit venue, with a formidable catwalk and massive backdrop that unfolded into crisp video cubes. There were robots come to life ('Te Felicito'), theatrical pieces ('Ojos Así'), a giant blow-up wolf with laser-beam eyes ('She Wolf'), a lavish, sprawling gown ('Ultima').
Fans came primed for the party, many sporting light-up headbands fashioned with wolf ears, and their mood was festive well before Shakira took the stage, entertaining themselves with arena-wide waves and swaying with cell-phone lights.
'There's no better feeling than when a she-wolf is back with her pack,' Shakira told the LCA crowd early in the show.
Shakira's catalog is culturally diverse and sonically eclectic, and it was well represented Thursday night in a 23-song set that showcased music from her 2024 album, 'Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran' ('Women No Longer Cry'), alongside more time-tested material.
A dance-heavy opening stretch gave way to the first of several romps through the pop-rock side of her career, as she manned electric guitars on numbers such as 'Inevitable' and 'Don't Bother.' Her Latin roots rang true elsewhere in the show — the lively 'Chantaje,' 'Monotonía' and 'Objection (Tango)' — while her World Cup anthem 'Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)' provided an exuberant, multicolored finale to the main set.
Shakira addressed Thursday's crowd mostly in English, though she did offer one Spanish soliloquy midway through, championing female empowerment in the face of societal cynicism about aging.
She was backed by a vast supporting cast of musicians and dancers who came and went throughout the night, occasionally leading to big ensemble numbers such as the pairing of 'Addicted to You' and 'Loca' and the bounding bit of old-school power-pop 'Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos.'
While those blockbuster segments were the easy highlights — including the sultry rocker 'Poem to a Horse' — the lower-key moments had their charms, too: When Shakira reached way back for a rendition of 1997's stripped-back 'Antologia,' gathered in a tight circle with her core band members at the head of the runway, she had the entirety of Little Caesars Arena in her thrall.
Shakira's tour will pick back up Saturday with a lakeside show at Chicago's Grant Park, winding across North America before wrapping up with dates later this summer in Mexico and South America.
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Shakira dazzles at LCA as tour brings reenergized star to Detroit