Shakira is a girl on fire!
In her music video for “Empire,” the second single off her self-titled album, out Tuesday (March 25), the Latin songstress is overtaken by the power of one man’s love, but he is not the man she is set to marry.
Shakira is seen at the start of the clip as a blushing bride ready to walk down the aisle. Once the church doors open, however, doubt crosses her face as she drops her bouquet of flowers and runs out of the church, leaving her guests and groom behind.
“Like the empires of the world unite/ We are alive/ And the stars make love to the universe/ You’re my wildfire every single night,” Shakira sings.
The video — directed by Darren Craig, Jonathan Craven and Jeff Nicholas from the Uprising Creative — then takes us on a visual journey as Shakira breaks free from her past relationship, literally setting it on fire. After fleeing and dancing in an open field, the singer is seen in front of the church singing the powerful rock-pop song as the veil and back of her traditional white wedding dress go up in flames.
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It’s not just her dress that suffers the burn: The church does as well. Ditching what was left of her wedding dress, Shakira rocks a low-cut black dress as she dances her way through the ruined church matching the pulsating beat of the emotional power anthem.
We never do come face-to-face with the man who holds Shakira’s heart in the video, but that may be because her boyfriend, Spanish footballer Gerard Piqué, has banned the singer from filming videos with male co-stars.
“He’s very territorial, and since he no longer lets me do videos with men, well, I have to do them with women,” Shakira told Billboard. “It’s more than implied in our relationship that I can’t do videos like I used to. It’s out of the question — which I like, by the way. I like that he protects his turf and he values me, in a way that the only person that he would ever let graze my thigh would be Rihanna.”
That’s a reference to “The Voice” coach’s steamy clip with Rihanna, which was the lead single off the new LP, her tenth studio album and first album release in four years.
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