Songoftheday 5/5/23 - You're a song written by the hands of God, don't get me wrong 'cause this might sound to you a bit odd...

 

 

"Underneath Your Clothes" - Shakira

from the album Laundry Service (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 13

 

Today's song comes from Colombian singer/songwriter Shakira, who broke through to the English-language market worldwide with her hit "Whenever, Wherever", which reached the top ten on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in America at the end of 2001. The second single pulled from the Laundry Service album was "Underneath Your Clothes", written and produced by the singer with Lester Mendez. Like "Whenever, Wherever", the song suffers from clunky syntax understandable from someone still learning the language at the time, like rhyming "God" with "odd" in the first line. And although the more delicate love ballad is clearly meaning the song title to be what's in her partner's heart, the inference to more salacious matters provides enough of a subtext to get the horny guys' attention. As opposed to the former hit's call to the dancefloor, Shakira had to try harder for this song, and it is an improvement, despite the sometimes awkward wording. Nevertheless the public ate it up, and granted Shakira a second top ten hit off the bat, especially with MTV grabbing on to the music video directed by photo icon Herb Ritts (Madonna's "Cherish" and Janet Jackson's "Love Will Never Do")...

"Underneath Your Clothes" made the Hot 100 top ten in May of 2002. On the radio, the song peaked at #4 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, #25 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio panel, and #39 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format. The club remixes done by Mendes as well as the Thunderpuss team helped the track rise to #5 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart as well. Internationally, the single topped the charts in Australia, Austria, Belgium (#1 Flanders/#7 Wallonia), Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, and Portugal, and reached the top ten in Germany (#2), France (#2), the Netherlands (#2), Switzerland (#2), Norway (#2), New Zealand (#2), Poland (#2), the United Kingdom (#3), Italy (#3), Sweden (#3), Denmark (#4), Greece (#6), Finland (#8), and Romania (#8). 

The third single from the album was "Objection (Tango)", which combined surf-rock rhythm and attitude with regional Mexican pacing and accordion flair, and it was the best thing on the album. While the song got as high as #21 on Billboard's Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, the lack of a commercial single hindered it, and the song stopped below the halfway mark on the Hot 100 at #55 (and #25 on the Dance Club Play chart). Overseas that wasn't an issue (singles were still the norm), and the song went to #1 in Romania and top ten in Australia (#2), the Netherlands (#5), Croatia (#5), Italy (#6), Poland (#6), Sweden (#7), Portugal (#7), Belgium (#8 Wallonia/#9 Flanders), New Zealand (#8), Norway (#8), Greece (#8), France (#10), Finland (#10), and Switzerland (#10), and #17 in the UK. A fourth release, "The One", was written with Glen Ballard (of Alanis Morissette fame), and was a moderate international hit, though it didn't get any traction in America. 

Meanwhile, in Spain, where neither "Underneath Your Clothes" and "Objection" weren't released as singles, the Spanish-language track "Te Dejo Madrid" ("I Leave You Madrid") peaked at #7 and "Que Me Quedes Tu" ("That I Have You") went to #10, with the latter topping Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart for one week. 

Shakira will be back to the series.

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Here's the club remix transformation of "Underneath Your Clothes" from Thunderpuss which helped the ballad make the top five on Billboard's Dance chart...

Next up, Shakira performing live in concert in 2001..

and lastly, on tour in 2007...

Songoftheday will be back Monday with Atlantans celebrating the weekend.