Goal-hunting strikers, ball-stopping defenders, and…Shakira? That’s right: With the world’s biggest football tournament well underway, we’re reminded that the stars lighting up the pitch this summer include some of the most talented players on the planet, along with one particular hitmaker from Colombia.
It’s not a football summer if Shakira isn’t involved—and Spotify has the data to back it up.
Shakira’s got plenty of history with football’s grandest stage. In 2006, she closed the all-world tournament in Berlin with a performance of “Hips Don’t Lie.” That song’s streams are up 61.6% during this year’s contest.
In 2010, with the football world focused on South Africa, Shakira released “Waka Waka.” It, too, hasn’t gone anywhere since: Spotify listeners were responsible for a staggering 246% increase in streams of the song the day after this year’s tournament began, and streams of the track have been up more than 128% since things kicked off last month. ¡Golazo!
“La La La,” released in 2014, continued the trend in Brazil, and came complete with a star-studded music video featuring legends like Lionel Messi and Neymar. Streams of “La La La” are up a sizable 124.2% this year.
Not to be outdone this year, Shakira teamed up with Burna Boy for “Dai Dai” as the tournament touched down on North American soil. The Afrobeats-indebted song has lyrics in English, Italian, Spanish, French, and Japanese, and shouts out football heroes like Pelé, David Beckham, and Mohamed Salah. Naturally, Kylian Mbappé, Harry Kane, and Christian Pulisic all show up in the accompanying video. (Shakira, certified ball-knower, tips her cap in the lyrics to Andrés Iniesta and Carlos Valderrama, too.) In expected Shakira-football synergy, “Dai Dai” streams are up 136%.
Given all that, you’d be forgiven for thinking just about every football fan on earth knows Shakira. And plenty do, with 35 million playlists globally including one of her four football-related tracks.
But she’s breaking new ground, too: 15% of folks who’ve “Waka Waka” over the past three months are new Shakira listeners. More than a quarter of listeners to the song are under 25 years old. And—hard as it may be to believe—one of every seven people streaming the song today had never listened to Shakira before.
We won’t crown a world champion on the pitch until later this summer. But it’s clear that we can already consider Shakira and her fans major winners: Her overall catalog’s streams are up 21.6% during the tournament so far. And just this week she hit a major milestone, becoming the first female Latin artist to surpass 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
If there’s ever an all-time starting 11 for football-minded musicians, you can bet Shakira’s leading the squad.
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