Shakira Reflects on 20 Years of ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ on ‘Fallon’

Shakira returned to The Tonight Show for the second time this week to discuss the anniversary of her hit single “Hips Don’t Lie” and her current record-breaking tour.

The Colombian singer, who performed “Hips Don’t Lie” alongside Wyclef Jean earlier this week for the late-night show, said that the song wasn’t originally meant to be part of her 2005 platinum-certified album, Oral Fixation, Vol. 2. 

“This idea came up and Wyclef and I met and we started working on this track,” she remembered, speaking to host Jimmy Fallon. “And, you know, the funniest thing is that I had a dream, the most random dream about Wyclef. It wasn’t a sexual dream! It was just a dream. And then I woke up and my manager called me and said, ‘Wyclef wants to work with you.’”

She added that after they started collaborating “I knew I had a hit” so she called her record label head and asked him to recall of all of the albums from the stores. “He did it and we kind of had to repackage the albums, and it changed my story,” Shakira said.

She added, “Since that song came about people called me Shakira twice. Some people have used lie detectors on me.”

The musician also discussed what it felt like to sell-out 11 shows in Mexico City and to have the No. 1 tour in the world for the second month in a row. “It’s incredible,” she told Fallon. “I’ve been working on this tour for a year, preparing every single detail, from the visuals to the music. I’ve put together my biggest set list. I’m singing some of my classic songs, from ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ to ‘Whenever, Whatever’ to the most recent ones.”

She continued, “And it’s a pretty huge production. It’s a huge effort to tour with this production around Latin America. It’s probably the biggest production that’s ever traveled Latin America. It weighs like 93 tons. The screen is huge and it’s 145 people traveling… So when you show up and you see so many people dancing and singing and crying and getting emotional. It’s a party, but people really, really connect with this music. It’s been like the soundtrack of their lives, for many of my fans.”

Fallon also subjected Shakira to a game of “Box of Lies,” which involved the pair trying to trick each other about what is inside their mystery boxes.

Later this month, Shakira will return to The Tonight Show to perform her 1996 ballad “Antología.” She launched her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour in Brazil in February, and will kick off the North American leg of the tour on May 13 at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. She will also perform in Washington, D.C., on May 26 as the headliner of WorldPride DC.