“It wasn’t your fault, nor was it mine. / It was the monotony’s fault I never said anything, but it hurt me / I knew this would happen,” declares Shakira at the start of “Monotonia (Monotony),” her new song with Ozuna. Released Wednesday (Oct. 19), “Monotonia” is Shakira’s second single following her split from her longtime partner, Gerard Piqué. In the lyrics – transcribed by Genius and translated by Google – Shakira, 43, and Ozuna, 30, come together for a verse that addresses an unnamed lover. “You, distant with your attitude, and that filled me with restlessness / You didn’t give even half, but I do know that I gave more than you.”
“I was running for someone who wasn’t even walking for me / This love has not died, but it is delirious / From what there was, there is no more / I tell you honestly / To’ is cold like Christmas / It is better that this is over now (Now, now),” continues the verse. The song ends with Shakira again saying, “It wasn’t your fault, nor was it mine. / It was the monotony’s fault.”
The music video also captures the pain of “monotony,” with Shakira going through the motions of everyday life before an unnamed ex uses a rocket launcher to blow her heart out of her chest. A confused Shakira wanders through the streets with a gaping wound through her torso, and her heart in her hand. Ultimately, she finds Ozuna and is able to safely place her heart in a box, away from anyone who would hurt her again.
This is the second song from Shakira since she and Gerard, 35, called it quits in June after eleven years together. In late September, Shakira released “Te Felicito (I Congratulate You)'” The translated lyrics to the song read, “To make you whole / I broke myself in pieces / I was warned, but I didn’t take heed / Don’t tell me you’re sorry / I know you well and I know you’re lying.”
“This is really hard to talk about personally, especially as this is the first time I’ve ever addressed this situation in an interview,” Shakira said in a Sept. 2022 interview with Elle magazine. “It’s hard to talk about it, especially because I’m still going through it.” Shakira said that the split was her “darkest hour,” and that the couple has yet to establish custody of their two sons, Milan, 9, and 7-year-old Sasha.
“Sometimes I just feel like this is all a bad dream and that I’m going to wake up at some point. But no, it’s real,” she added. “And what’s also real is the disappointment to see something as sacred and as special as I thought was the relationship I had with my kids’ father and see that turned into something vulgarized and cheapened by the media. And all of this while my dad has been in the ICU, and I’ve been fighting on different fronts. Like I said, this is probably the darkest hour of my life.”