No creo

The song *No creo* by Shakira starts from a clear idea: generalized distrust, except towards true love. To give weight to this stance, the lyrics draw on references ranging from antiquity, such as the gods Venus and Mars, to figures of modern thought like Karl Marx and Jean-Paul Sartre, and even the psychiatrist Brian Weiss with his theories on regression. These mentions aim to reinforce the idea that, in the face of doubt about almost everything, there is a single certainty. The production of this piece, which lasts just under four minutes, involved the collaboration of Luis Fernando Ochoa and Shakira herself as producers, while the recording engineering involved a considerable team, including Marcelo Acevedo, Felipe Alvarez, Eric Shilling, and Javier Garza, among others. The mixing was handled by Javier Garza and Sebastián Krys.

Originally released as part of the album *¿Dónde están los ladrones?* in 1998, *No creo* was selected to be the fourth promotional single, released to the public on February 7, 1999. There was a time when it was considered that it could be the first single from the album, but eventually *Ciega, sordomuda* was chosen. The music video for *No creo*, directed again by the Argentine Gustavo Garzón, who had already worked with Shakira on other projects, features the artist with a change in image to brown hair. The clip is characterized by a critique of society and its conventions, something recurring in Garzón's work for her. Curiously, some sequences from the video of *No creo* later appeared in the video for *Ciega, sordomuda*, fueling speculation about whether they had been filmed together. The song also had an acoustic version, presented at the *Unplugged* show in 2000, which incorporated elements of funk and ska. The promotion of *No creo* had a particular emphasis in Brazil, although some of the audiovisual material associated with it has been lost over time.