Shakira is one of the more interesting characters in pop music today.

Musically, she’s been all over the place. She started off on a sort of Alanis Morissette vibe, and then once she started singing in English, her music became more dance/pop oriented, but not really any more mainstream. “Hips Don’t Lie”, her song with Wyclef, was a huge hit, but it was still a bit odd compared to the majority of pop music out these […]

In the mid-late Nineties, when “alternative” became mainstream, the term lost it’s meaning. Bands like Counting Crows, who were as traditional a rock band as there ever was, were all of a sudden “alternative”. Alternative to what? A term that was first used to describe bands that were off the beaten path turned into a catch-all for any act that wasn’t dance/pop. I was gonna add R&B and hip-hop to the mix of categories, but […]