No Lyrics in English by Shakira
Cemento is the Spanish word for "cement", a common building material. But in this song, Shakira uses it in a deeply poetic and unexpected way.
She sings the powerful line, "Pesa más la rabia que el cemento", which translates to "Anger weighs more than cement". By comparing the emotional weight of her rage to a famously heavy material, she creates a stark and unforgettable image of how heavy her heartbreak feels.
Colombian superstar Shakira delivers the ultimate breakup reality check in this pop track. She is completely done with smooth talk and recycled excuses, calling out her ex right from the start: "Las excusas ya existían antes de ti" ["Excuses already existed before you"] and "La retórica es tu arma más letal" ["Rhetoric is your most lethal weapon"]. She tells him to stop using the word "we" ("No hables en plural") because this partnership is officially over. You can feel the sheer exhaustion when she notes that anger is literally heavier than concrete ("Pesa más la rabia que el cemento") and that spending your whole life endlessly trying to fix things is a waste of a soul.
She also plays with some clever Spanish wordplay that is great for learners to notice. Listen to how she twists the verb esperar (which can mean both "to wait" and "to hope"): "Espero que no esperes que te espere" ["I hope you don't expect me to wait for you"]. To make her boundary even clearer, she drops in a vivid idiom: "La paciencia se me ha ido hasta los pies" [literally "My patience has gone down to my feet"], meaning she has run completely out of patience after turning 26. Rather than throwing a loud tantrum, she sits there plucking daisy petals and staring blankly into space ("mirando sin mirar"), hoping to bore him enough so that he finally packs his bags and leaves.
