Shakira en "The Voice: Season 4"

Shakira

Shakira serves as coach on "The Voice," NBC's hit reality vocal competition series that searches for the nation's best voice.

Over the course of her career, Colombian singer-songwriter and Grammy winner Shakira has sold close to 60 million albums worldwide and has won numerous awards including two Grammys, nine Latin Grammys, four World Music Awards, three American Music Awards and five Billboard Music Awards, to name a few. Her collaborations with such stars as Beyonce and Alejandro Sanz have helped keep her audience expanding continually, and she is the only artist from South America to have a No. 1 song in the US. She has had four of the 20 top-selling hits of the last decade, more than any other artist - including 2006's unforgettable "Hips Don't Lie," the biggest-selling single of the 21st century, which reached the No. 1 spot in an astonishing 55 countries.

Shakira began writing songs at the age of eight, learned to speak English by studying the work of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Walt Whitman, and took history classes at UCLA during her break between albums. At the age of 18, she founded the Pies Descalzos (Barefoot) Foundation which currently provides education and nutrition to over 6,000 impoverished children in Colombia and is expanding its work to other countries, including newly launched projects in Haiti and South Africa.

"Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)," along with its Spanish language version, "Waka Waka (Esto es África)," was another worldwide sensation. It was the theme song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the event's biggest song ever released. The official video has received nearly 500 million YouTube hits, making it the No. 3 most-watched video of all time and the No. 3 most-watched music video. The track was also the soundtrack to Shakira's 1Goal campaign for universal education. On her ninth album, "Sale El Sol/The Sun Comes Out," the global superstar continued her creative journey by looking both forward and back. Released on the heels of the worldwide success of "Waka Waka," the album also marked the next chapter after 2009's critically-acclaimed, dance-oriented "She Wolf," the long-awaited follow-up to 2005's groundbreaking one-two punch comprised of "Fijación Oral, Volume 1" and "Oral Fixation, Volume 2" - a pair of albums that sold over 12 million copies combined worldwide and secured the young Colombian-born singer's place among pop music royalty.

Shakira is currently in Barcelona recording her new album.

http://www.nbc.com/the-voice/season-4-preview/