Shakira - Underneath Your Clothes

What this video is

Released in February 2002 as the second single from Shakira's English-language debut Laundry Service (2001), 'Underneath Your Clothes' arrived at the apex of a Latin pop crossover wave that had been building since the late 1990s. The video's mock-documentary opening — in which a journalist asks Shakira about her 'crossover' ambitions and she deliberately responds in Spanish — directly engages and subverts the media…

Why it matters

A landmark in early-2000s Latin pop crossover, this video exemplifies the collision of fashion-photography auteurism (Herb Ritts) with mainstream MTV promotion. Its mock-documentary format was a rare self-reflexive gesture in the genre, critiquing crossover media narratives from within a crossover…

The director

Herbert Ritts Jr. (August 13, 1952 – December 26, 2002) was an American fashion photographer and music video director. Born in Los Angeles, he built a career photographing celebrities and supermodels for Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Harper's…