Shakira Explains Why She Almost Didn’t Release ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ as Hit Song Turns 20

“Hips Don’t Lie” is an ageless anthem that is still drawing listeners to dance floors across the globe as it turns 20. However, Shakira very nearly didn’t get to release it.

The 48-year-old musician collaborated with Wyclef Jean on the song, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2005, and it has since amassed more than 2 billion streams on Spotify alone and instantly invokes a sense of nostalgia for the early aughts every time it plays.

During a Thursday, May 8, appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Shakira reflected on the special song, which she said “changed [her] story.”

Interestingly, she told host Jimmy Fallon that she had to fight to get it included on her 2005 album Oral Fixation, Vol. 2. In fact, adding the song turned out to be an expensive risk that luckily paid off.

“I remember my album was already distributed and then this idea came up and Wyclef and I met. We started working on this track,” she recalled, explaining that the album had already been sent out to stores for sale. “The funniest thing is that I had a dream — the most random dream about Wyclef.”

Shakira continued, saying, “Then I woke up, and my manager called me and said, ‘You know what? Wyclef wants to work with you.’ And I’m like, ‘No, no. It can’t be. I had a dream about Wyclef last night. Why would I dream about Wyclef?’ ”

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Fallon, 50, joked that she “manifested” the collaboration, and Shakira emphasized that she had faith in it. So much, in fact, that she reached out to the head of her record company at the time (Donny Ienner) studio and urged him to pull her records back so that it could be repackaged with “Hips Don’t Lie” included.

“You’ve got to believe me. You’ve got to trust me You do that, we have a hit,” she remembered telling him. “He did it, we repackaged the albums and it changed my story.”

“Hips Don’t Lie” became an enduring smash that is not just one of Shakira’s all-time defining anthems; it’s also an undeniable classic from the era.

There was another way that the song changed Shakira’s life: “People call me Shakira twice,” she said, nodding to the way that she is referred to as “Shakira, Shakira” in the lyrics.

Speaking to Billboard in 2023, Shakira revealed just how much of a risk “Hips Don’t Lie” could have been for her.

“Latin music wasn’t really at its peak like it is right now in the U.S.,” she said. “Many radios, at first, really didn’t want to play ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ because it sounded too Latin for them.”

To celebrate the song’s big birthday, Shakira and Wyclef performed it on The Tonight Show earlier this week.

Their big performance came only a day after Shakira ascended the steps at the iconic Metropolitan Museum of Art to attend the 2025 Met Gala.

After making her Met Gala debut in 2024, she returned for a second consecutive year. This time, she opted for a blush pink princess gown with a lengthy train.

Despite her fashionable appearance, Shakira noted one issue with her look — “Everyone stepped on my train” — joking that it was “getting tie-dyed” from all of the shoes that were stepping on it.

The singer handled it with grace though and told Fallon that she took the piece of her gown off and left it behind, saying, “It must be somewhere at the Metropolitan.”

“I just left it there,” she said, joking that it was now “part of the exhibition.”