Shakira gets painfully honest on ’60 Minutes’
Colombian singer Shakira will appear on CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday night about a month ahead of her Super Bowl Halftime Show alongside Jennifer Lopez.
It should be an enlightening and interesting conversation with the Colombian artist who many are surprised to find is articulate, intelligent, and not just what she appears to be on the surface.
What might she discuss with 60 Minutes’ Bill Whitaker?
Her upcoming Super Bowl Halftime Show
It makes sense that Shakira’s approaching appearance in the Super Bowl Halftime Show with Jennifer Lopez will be a topic of conversation on the Sunday night news program. The highly anticipated game and show are coming up fast on Sunday, Feb. 2.
60 Minutes correspondent Whitaker joined the singer in November 2019 for her last concert before the Super Bowl, held in Madrid, Spain.
| GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images
The announcement that Shakira and Lopez would be the halftime performers at the biggest U.S. football game of the year was received with a great deal of excitement and surprise. Especially from the two global stars.
The Colombian artist told Apple Music’s Beats 1 in October, “I feel that it’s going to be great because [Jennifer Lopez] . . . represents a really important part of the Latino community who lives in the U.S.,” Shakira said.
“And I think in a way, I feel that I’m representing another part of the Latin world, which is all those people around the globe who almost barely speak English. I think this is going to be an event to celebrate Latin culture and the importance of women, also, in the industry.”
Shakira’s ‘Pies Descalzos’ Foundation
Shakira and Whitaker may also discuss the singer’s Pies Descalzos Foundation (Bare Feet Foundation), a project towards which the singer is intensely protective and doting.
The Pies Descalzos Foundation is a Colombian charitable organization founded by Shakira in 1997. She developed the charity with the goal of helping children living in poverty. The organization provides crucial charter schools to ensure a good education for every child.
In 2016, Shakira got word that her organization’s school received the enormous honor of being named the No. 1 public school in all of Colombia.
She released a statement at the time saying, “Right now I’m in the middle of shooting something but I have just received incredible news and I want to take a pause to celebrate it. Every year in Colombia they create a list where they choose the best public and private schools according to their Saber test results. And guess who leads the list? Fundación Pies Descalzos in Barranquilla!”
‘It became an obsession to me’
Ahead of Sunday night’s 60 Minutes broadcast with Shakira, CBS News teased some of her interview. Whitaker followed the singer as she prepared backstage for her show at the Davis Cup tennis tournament in Madrid, Spain. She spoke with him about what motivates her to succeed.
“I can really be hard on myself wanting it to be 100% perfect. I know perfection doesn’t exist but it’s a lesson I haven’t quite learned yet.”
The singer revealed where she got the drive for perfection. During her childhood in Colombia, after a lifetime of comfort, her father’s business became bankrupt and the family was plunged into poverty.
“It was really important to me to vindicate my family’s financial situation and social status,” she told Whitaker on the news program, “and to a point that it became an obsession to me, a healthy obsession, I would say, you know to succeed in life.”
Watch Shakira’s interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Jan. 5 on CBS.
Read more: Shakira Thinks Being Part of the Super Bowl Halftime Show Sends This 1 Message
