Shakira bolted from the stage at a Miami nightclub after she seemingly caught a person in the crowd trying to film up her dress.
The Hips Don’t Lie singer was inside LIV when the club’s DJ started playing one of her unreleased songs, Soltera. The three-time Grammy winner hopped onstage to dance along to the track when she seemed to realize one of the onlookers might be trying to catch her in a compromising position.
In a video that was shared to X and viewed over 40 million times, the pop star could be seen pulling at her dress and wagging her finger at someone in the audience. At one point, the Colombian songstress made a gesture to her eyes as if to say, “I see you,” as she tried to pull the garment down.
Shakira continued to dance and then made a cutting motion, signaling she was done, before exiting the platform.
As video made the rounds, fans defended the 47-year-old for abruptly walking off the stage, calling the alleged person filming her “gross.”
“That’s truly disappointing behaviour. Artists deserve respect and privacy, both on and off stage. It’s crucial to ensure a safe environment for everyone,” one person shared.
But on YouTube, some viewers seemed to find fault in Shakira’s clothing choice.
“Pretty much everyone from the first row to around the 3rd row from the stage would be able to see up her skirt,” one person observed. “Either move the barrier back about 30 feet. Or wear a longer skirt if you’re going to be stood at shoulder level to the audience.”
After the video went viral, LIV Nightclub claimed in a statement shared with Page Six that “it was actually (Shakira’s) photo and video team that she was trying to get to stop filming her while she was enjoying the moment with the crowd and fans.”
The clip came as Shakira gears up for her upcoming Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran outing, which kicks off in November and includes a show at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena on Nov. 30.
The trek will mark Shakira’s first tour since her 2022 split from longtime partner Gerard Pique, with whom she shares sons Milan, 11, and Sasha, 9.
The following year, she received a suspended three-year sentence and paid a fine of 7.3 million euros ($8 million) after she was charged with tax evasion in Spain.
“I did it to protect my children and to get on with my life, not out of cowardice or guilt,” Shakira wrote in an essay published in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo earlier this month.
“They wanted to make the public believe that I did not pay my taxes when the truth is that I paid much more than I should have. When I really had to do so, I declared myself a Spanish tax resident and if you add up all the amounts I paid voluntarily and the unjustified fines, you will see that the Spanish State kept a sum greater than my total earnings from those years,” she added.
She says her new LP Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, her first album in seven years, helped her overcome her personal problems.
“I’ve been through so much in these past few years that I had to literally pick up the pieces of myself and put them back together,” Shakira told The Associated Press earlier this year. “And during that process, I think that music was the glue.”
And her breakup from Pique, who allegedly cheated on her, gave her ample fodder for the lyrical content of her new music.
“Nobody chooses to go through the kind of life experiences that I went through when I was writing and creating this album, you know, life gives you lemons. So what do you do? Make lemonade. So I made songs,” she said.
But despite her public breakup with Pique, she hasn’t quite sworn off men for good.
She told Rolling Stone this week that she’s still open to finding love again.
“What can I tell you, I like men. That’s the problem. I shouldn’t like them with everything that’s happened to me, but imagine how much I like men that I still like them,” she said.