On the spanish-language albums that elevated her to Latin-rock-goddess status, Shakira Mebarak sounded playful, bohemian and rebellious. On her English-language debut, she sounds downright silly, but the blame is not entirely hers. Surrounded by a battalion of producers and songwriters, the twenty-four-year-old yodeling diva can't quite overcome the pedestrian nature of most of the material at hand, the bulk of which she co-wrote. Equally misdirected are her efforts to spice things up with obvious touches of Latin American folklore (the opening "Objection" sounds like a cross between "Livin' la Vida Loca" and an Astor Piazzolla tango). Shakira's voice is a wild and beautiful instrument, and she's capable of delivering scorching moments of musical passion, as her live performances have amply demonstrated. But if you take away the Zeppelin-esque crunch of the Glen Ballard-penned ballad "The One" and the sinuous chants of the Lebanese-flavored "Eyes Like Yours," you'll see that, for now, at least, Shakira's magic is lost in translation.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.