has put Shakira’s 2010 World Cup anthem Waka Waka at the top of her World Cup songs, and the timing matters because she is preparing to perform at Sunday’s final. For a singer whose biggest hits have often traveled far beyond the sport itself, that ranking singles out the track most likely to follow her back onto a global stage.
Waka Waka was released for the South Africa World Cup and featured Freshlyground, with the song turning preened football superstars such as Ronaldo into soldiers on a frontline. That is part of why it has endured: it sounds like a stadium record, but it also carries the wide-open, borderless feel that made Shakira one of the planet’s biggest stars after Laundry Service in 2001.
’s judgment lands harder when set beside the rest of her catalog. Shakira has never been a one-note pop machine. She rented an estate in Madrid to work alone on Fijación Oral, Vol 1, then later brought Pharrell into She Wolf; she linked up with Anitta on Choka Choka, a track built from baile funk, hip-hop and dance; and she also recorded Te Felicito, an electropop and reggaeton song that would eventually surface on Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran in 2024.
That range is exactly why Waka Waka stands out. Some of her songs are more playful, more pointed or more overlooked, but this one was designed to travel. It was a World Cup anthem that knew how to sound official without losing Shakira’s snap. Even in a career full of restlessly different records, it remains the song most clearly built for the biggest possible crowd.
There is still a small gap that hangs over Sunday: the performance has been announced, but the song list has not. However she approaches the final, Waka Waka is now the benchmark the rest of her World Cup output has to live with.
