While Shakira might have reverted to “retro” 00s sensibilities in imagining “the future” with 2022’s “Te Felicito” featuring Rauw Alejandro, her latest single, “Copa Vacía,” has a more realistic take on what the years ahead will hold. And that is: a lot of fucking trash. Everywhere. Trash that will particularly affect marine life. And, regardless of Shakira portraying herself as the “mythical creature” of a mermaid to get that point across, it works quite effectively. Indeed, it’s probably precisely because she’s a mermaid that the imagery of her placed against the backdrop of what amounts to a sandy landfill is so potent. After all, people only seem to care about helping other life forms when they’re “attractive,” this being referred to in such terms as “lookism,” “the beauty bias” and “speciesism.” Plus, the jarring sight of Mermaid Shakira in this harsh environment is designed to complement a single about yearning and lack of fulfillment—sexually, in case you couldn’t guess. Thus, being resigned to a dried-up, post-apocalyptic landscape makes plenty of sense. But, for the rest of us, there won’t be much symbolism in the imagery…it’s just going to be full-stop dried-up and post-apocalyptic without the “benefit” of “looking mermaid hot” like Shakira. Everyone will certainly be hot though, burning up in a world that’s risen +two degrees Fahrenheit in temperature. And who knows if anyone will have time for lust/worrying about a “copa vacía” with constant thoughts of survival/being a climate refugee on the brain?
With “Copa Vacía” translating to “Empty Cup,” Shakira as a mermaid with no water to soak in lends added poetry to the aesthetic choice. Building on her endless list of male collaborators of late is Manuel Turizo (a seeming Maluma lookalike [at least in this video]—maybe there’s something in the water in Colombia). Joining the ranks of Shakira collaborators past, including the aforementioned Alejandro on “Te Felicito” and Ozuna on “Monotonía,” Turizo is the one who jumps into the body of water Shakira eventually washes up from in other scenes that we see of her. While underwater, Turizo looks around to take in the fact that Shakira is swimming away from him, perhaps having realized that she’s only able to quench her thirst elsewhere (hence, suddenly being in an ocean as opposed to on dry, trash-filled land—where co-directors Shakira and Jaume de Laiguana initially set the video’s stage). But wait, it’s not over yet, for she foolishly decides to circle him (almost tauntingly), therefore giving Turizo the chance to capture her in his net.
As he drags her through the “mud” (literally!), we soon see that her fate is not much better than Madison’s (Daryl Hannah) in Splash after she’s captured by government agents to be studied and dissected. But, at least, in that case, they were giving her some attention. Whereas Shakira exists in a barely-half-full tank of water, gazing out and pressing her hand to the glass as Turizo ignores her. And plays his video games (as Lana would point out). So while he might think he’s been “kind enough” to “rescue” her from her former existence, he’s actually created a worse one for her at present. Because, yes, humans tend to create worse environments for every creature that’s meant to be “wild.” Intercut scenes of Shakira lying down on the trash-filled beach again are accompanied with being in her “natural” environment on a rock (à la Ariel) or positively drenched (she wishes this wetness extended “down below,” of course) beneath a waterfall as Turizo stands next to her—not doing much to help a bitch out on feeling wanted. Desired. With the topic of sexual frigidity often being one that’s directed at women as yet another means to berate them, it seems worth reminding the latter gender that the surest sign a man is cheating is his sudden coldness toward your body. His general “meh” reaction. So it is that Shakira laments, “Why don’t you want/When I want/You are colder than the month of January/I ask for heat and you give nothing but ice, oh” (in Spanish, that’s: “Por qué no quieres/Cuando yo quiero/Estás más frío/Que el mes de enero/Pido calor y no das más que hielo, oh”). Lana Del Rey would have sung that as, “Oooh, you’re cold as ice baby/But when you’re nice baby/It’s so amazing in every way.”
As for the frío man Shakira accuses in “Copa Vacía,” it obviously feels like another pointed jab at her ex, Gerard Piqué, who has lately been a muse for such indelible “fuck you” bops as “Shakira: BZRP Music Sessions #53” and “TQG.” To be sure, Piqué must have been quite thawed on his erstwhile “partner” to have prompted these feelings. And yeah, they clara…mente thawed because he had younger snatch to turn to for his own “thirst quenching” needs. To that point, Shakira sings, “I’ve been thirsty for a while/I don’t know why I’m left wanting more/Wanting to drink from an empty cup.” Perhaps because many of us are slow on the uptake with regard to learning our lesson. That someone isn’t going to change no matter how hard you want them to, or how hard you romanticize the initial phases of your relationship with them. Which is surely what Shakira was doing before she found out about Clara Chia Marti. While her father was in the hospital.
In contrast to Piqué, however, Turizo comes across as more empathetic, not to mention actually interested making the relationship work. So it is that he offers his counterpoint perspective, “As if I didn’t feel anything/Now you look at me so different/Me swimming against the current/You have me on the street looking for/With what to fill this emptiness that you feel/I am not a mechanic/But I try to fix it and it doesn’t work/Reviving a heart that does not react/I don’t want to try it with someone else.” Shakira then explains, “Your kisses are salt water/I drink, and nothing calms me down/I wait for you and you disappoint me/It does not work like this.”
All the while, her essential sense of mermaid freedom is stripped away from her the more hopeless and crestfallen she becomes. So it is that, by the end, we see her being strung up by a chain with her hands bound, a bland beige-ish tarp behind her to intensify the overall colorlessness of a world without love and sex (the world we’re quickly coming to know amid the exacerbating conditions of climate change). The final scene again shows her in the trash-laden, mud-like sand. For this is the mermaid vision of the future. Not just experiencing a love drought, but an actual one as well. The “empty cup”—an emblem of no water from which to drink—of the song also mirroring the according landscapes we see throughout the video. And what we’ll see as the next decade wears on.
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