'I'm free': Shakira says ex Gerard Piqué was 'dragging' her work down

Shakira is "free" to work on her music again after her 2022 split from Gerard Piqué.

Speaking on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon about her new album – released seven years after her last – the singer admitted her ex was "dragging" her work down.

"I've been putting out music here and there, but it was really hard for me to put together a body of work," Shakira spoke about her new album Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran.

Watch the video above.

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"I didn't have time. It was the husband-factor. Now I'm husband-less," she said of her ex partner, who she reportedly never married.

"Yeah, the husband was dragging me down. Now I'm free. Now I can actually work."

The star revealed to host Jimmy Fallon her twelfth studio album, which came out March 22, was a process of "trying to rebuild" herself at the time.

"I was raw. I was dealing with a lot of stuff. I felt at times with a knife between my teeth," she explained.

"I was picking up the pieces of myself from the floor. I was trying to rebuild myself. Music was the glue."

Over the last couple of years, the singer has dealt with a major tax fraud lawsuit in Spain while going through a custody battle with her ex partner Gerard Piqué.

The Hips Don't Lie singer announced in a join statement she had split from her partner of 11 years Piqué, who she shared sons Milan and Sasha with, in June 2022.

Shakira spoke publicly about her "really hard" split from the Spanish professional footballer months later in a September 2022 interview with Elle.

"I've remained quiet and just tried to process it all," she told the publication.

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"It's hard to talk about it, especially because I'm still going through it, and because I'm in the public eye and because our separation is not like a regular separation."

The singer added that she had "tried to conceal the situation" from the pair's two sons.

Just two months after his split from the Whenever, Wherever singer, Piqué was first spotted at a music festival in August with his new girlfriend Clara Chia Marti, fuelling cheating speculation.

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