After attaining international success in 2001 with her fifth studio album and first English-language record, Laundry Service, Shakira wanted to release a fifth Spanish-language project as a follow-up.

Shakira enlisted Rick Rubin as executive producer, also working with Gustavo Cerati, Lester Mendez, Luis Fernando Ochoa and Jose "Gocho" Torres.

Although its lead single ("La Tortura") was the only track to enter the US Billboard Hot 100, the follow-up singles "No", "Día de Enero" and "Las de la Intuición" enjoyed moderate success on the Hot Latin Songs, Tropical Songs and Latin Pop Airplay charts.

After achieving international success in 2001 with her first English album, Laundry Service, Shakira released a Spanish-language record as its followup (her first since 1998's Dónde Están los Ladrones?).

Having co-written nearly sixty songs for the project, she decided to divide the release into two volumes and put herself "on the mission of selecting [her] favorite ones" to record.

[3] It was reissued in 2006 as an expanded version with an additional translated recording and her future international-hit single, "Hips Don't Lie".

[4] When recording the albums, she worked with previous collaborators Lester Mendez and Luis Fernando Ochoa and new partners Gustavo Cerati and Jose "Gocho" Torres.

She stated that both covers alluded to psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's theory that infants begin discovering the world through their mouths during the oral stage of psychosexual development.

[10] The introductory track, "En Tus Pupilas" ("In Your Pupils"), incorporates folk music styles[11] and its opening verse includes French-language lyrics.

[11] "La Tortura" ("The Torture") features Spanish singer-songwriter Alejandro Sanz, with elements of Colombian cumbia music, dancehall and electronica.

The clip refers to Shakira's then-boyfriend Antonio de la Rúa as she writes the letters "S y A" in a heart drawn in the sand.

[36] With assistance from the Creative Artists Agency, she visited twenty-seven cities and performed forty-one shows across five continents.

[37] The tour was additionally sponsored by Spanish automobile manufacturer SEAT, with whom Shakira also collaborated to support her Pies Descalzos Foundation.

[40] In November 2007 Epic Records released the Oral Fixation Tour live album on Blu-ray Disc, which was filmed during a December 2006 show in Miami, Florida.

[11] Entertainment Weekly's Ernesto Lechner felt that Shakira "has found herself again" by "placing her operatic vocalizing at the service of Spanish poetry", adding that this was her strongest album to date.

[43] The Guardian's Dave Simpson noted that "the songs are catchy, with melodies good enough to tempt non-Spanish speakers to sing along".

[44] Jon Pareles of The New York Times described the album as "blissfully pan-American", elaborating that "for Shakira it's all pop, taut structures for volatile passion".

[12] Barry Walters of Rolling Stone said that executive producer Rick Rubin helped "restore Shakira's artistic integrity by keeping the industry at bay".

"[46] Paste's Mark Kemp gave it a mixed review, saying that the record was "stronger overall than Laundry Service but not as warm as Dónde Están los Ladrones?

"[45] In North America, even though the largest Latin retail chain in the United States refused to sell the album,[47] Fijación Oral, Vol.

Its Billboard 200 record lasted for 15 years, being surpassed by Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny and his album El Último Tour del Mundo, which debuted at number-one on the chart in December 2020.

[64] The record peaked at numbers seven and fifteen, respectively, on the Belgian Walloon and Flanders album charts;[65] it was certified gold for shipments of 25,000 copies.

1 after the success of the English-language Laundry Service was a "sharp move", complimenting the album for demonstrating that Shakira "can not only return to her roots, but expand upon them".

He described "La Tortura" as a "natural for American radio", and felt that the parent album generated anticipation for the upcoming Oral Fixation, Vol.

[10] Writing for PopMatters, Matt Cibula praised the album for its musical departure from Laundry Service, applauding the integration of subtle samples across several songs as "great nods to the sounds of the 1980s".

[11] Dave Simpson of The Guardian compared Shakira to a "Latin American Madonna", describing her vocals as reminiscent of "Cher and Hazel O'Connor, produced by Julio Iglesias".

[44] Jon Pareles of The New York Times found Shakira's "smart or ambitious" image to be uncharacteristic of a sex symbol.

[12] Writing for Paste, Mark Kemp complimented Shakira for dispelling notions she is "the Latin Britney, the female Ricky Martin [and] the pretty pop tart who sings in Spanish and sounds like Alanis"; he compared the mix of musical elements in Fijación Oral, Vol.

He credited the album for inspiring a revival of pop music, saying that the release proved that the genre "wasn't dead, just sleeping".

After it debuted at number 4 on the US Billboard 200 and became the highest-debuting full-length Spanish album in the country, her label Epic Records called her "the biggest female crossover artist in the world".