Shakira the Great? She's working on it

In the belly of the Nokia Theatre recently, the hours were ticking down toward the American Music Awards telecast amid the usual frenzy of sound checks and lighting cues.

Everyone was waiting for the petite woman with the pre-Raphaelite blond curls. And from the moment Shakira stepped onstage in stiletto boots, skin-tight pants and jacket and a long gray muffler, it was clear who was running the show.

For the next hour or so, the Colombian pop star sorted out the paces of her performance, issuing instructions to her music crew, demonstrating moves to dancers and conferring with her manager and choreographer.

Then she whipped through a rehearsal of "Give It Up to Me," the dance tune that she shares with rapper Lil Wayne on her just-released album She Wolf. For the workaholic and self-admitted control freak, it was all in a morning's labors.

A few minutes later, seated in her dressing room, she spoke of the need in the music business for always "being on top of your game and making sure that the perception is coherent with what you want to express" creatively.

For Shakira, 32, who has been in the spotlight since puberty, that means "being in survival mode all the time" and sweating the details.

"I read once that Alexander the Great would've not been great, that great, if he would've not traveled with the historians who documented his multiple battles and his victories," she mused. "So documenting your work is important, making sure that the work, if it's well done, if you put many hours and effort and energy into that, that it does its job, that it's presented the right way.

"And that's when you make sure that you're surrounded by intelligent people who can also contribute to your career in great ways . . . ," she continued. "You can't win a battle if you don't have the right army behind you."
 
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