Shakira reveals emotional toll of Copacabana show as father battled health crisis

Shakira took the stage at Copacabana in early May for what she calls the biggest show of her career, but the hours leading up to that performance were shadowed by a family emergency unfolding hundreds of miles away. Her father, William Mebarak Chadid, ninety-four years old, suffered an ischemic episode and was rushed to the intensive care unit of a hospital in Barranquilla, Colombia—just hours before she was scheduled to perform on the Rio de Janeiro beach. For the first time, speaking to the Colombian broadcaster Noticias Caracol, Shakira opened up about what that collision of professional obligation and personal crisis felt like.

"It was difficult to do a show under those circumstances, because I knew my father was unwell that day," she said in the interview, which aired on Friday evening. The weight of that knowledge—that her father was in an ICU bed while she prepared to entertain thousands—could have derailed the entire event. Instead, she found a way through it, though not alone. "I was able to do the show because of the audience that was there, giving me all their strength," she explained.

William Mebarak Chadid spent twenty-four hours under observation in intensive care before being moved to a regular hospital room, where he remained for another day. Colombian media reported that after additional tests, he was discharged and continued his treatment at home. The timing was brutally tight: the health crisis unfolded in the hours immediately before Shakira's performance, leaving little room for her to process what was happening or to be physically present with her family.

Two days after the Copacabana show, Shakira posted on social media to thank the Brazilian audience and to acknowledge the weight of what had preceded the concert. She framed it not as a tragedy averted but as a moment of resilience—a choice to celebrate life despite its complications. "Even though the day was difficult for many of us, we went to celebrate life the way it is, with its successes and imperfections," she wrote. The Spanish press reported that she had learned of her father's hospitalization just hours before taking the stage, a detail that underscores the emotional tightrope she was walking.

What emerges from Shakira's account is not a story of a performer who simply pushed through adversity, but rather one of someone who was held up by the very people she was there to entertain. The audience became, in her telling, a kind of ballast—a collective presence that allowed her to do something that, in isolation, might have felt impossible. Her father's recovery and discharge meant that by the time she spoke publicly about the experience, the acute crisis had passed, but the emotional residue of that day remained vivid enough to warrant explanation. It is a reminder that what happens on stage is often only half the story.