Shakira

Shakira thought she might never sing again, said Emine Saner in The Guardian (U.K.). The Colombian pop superstar has sold 75 million records in Spanish and English and will co-headline the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show with Jennifer Lopez, but in late 2017 Shakira could barely speak after suffering a vocal cord hemorrhage. It was “unbearable,” says the famously joyous performer, 42. “I never thought that my voice would leave me. It was my identity. So when I couldn’t sing, there were times I couldn’t even get out of bed, I was so depressed.” Doctors said she needed surgery, but Shakira tried hypnosis and medication, and even went to Lourdes, France—the site of reported apparitions by the Virgin Mary—to seek a miraculous healing. In the meantime, her recovery required long periods of silence, which was especially difficult at home with two young kids. She’s never fought more with her partner, Spanish footballer Gerard Piqué. “He jokes that you would want your wife to shut up,” she says, but he felt like “one of those ex-convicts who are given their freedom and don’t know what to do with it.” Her voice eventually returned. “It felt like I was having some kind of religious experience,” she says. ■