She says the title has something to do with childhood id, but the whole oral fixation thing may just be Shakira’s will to inhale great gobs of the world. The Colombian-Lebanese pop star, who can sing in Spanish, English and a few other languages, too, acts as a master database of pop. On this English-language sequel to last summer’s Fijación Oral Vol. 1, she invokes more than a dozen different female singers, from Kate Bush to Janis Joplin, and her voice stretches and warps, like fatigued elastic, under the force.

Already overwrought in Spanish, she’s almost dippy in English. She’s the principal songwriter and producer here, so the surfeit of soft-rock and power ballads, rather than the left turns into punk and bossa nova that graced Vol. 1, was presumably her idea. Fighting against some terrible lyrics (“I’ve cried a thousand storms/I’ve blown away the clouds”), her songs demonstrate old-fashioned craft, and her hybridized production can be striking.

Often, she’s laying a contemporary matte finish over old-fashioned pop excesses, such as the slick synth washes in “The Day and the Time,” an excellent track that appeared on Vol. 1 as “Día Especial.” There’s more: In “Animal City,” the CD’s most elaborate confection, Pong noises, robot rhythms and surf guitar jostle against the globalized Latinisms of mariachi horns and flamenco guitars. And also less: In “Hey You” she aims lower, putting kitschy swinging-London pop under tarty misfires like “I’d like to be the owner of the zipper on your jeans.”

Here her ambition finally gets the best of her. Broader and more aggressive than both its predecessor and the 2001 English album Laundry Service, it also lacks a center of gravity. “Something” — the smart, lovely ballad that led off Fijación Oral as “En Tus Pupilas” — is Shakira at her best, and here it’s buried toward the end of the album. Fijación Oral may have been just as overweeningly global, but it had an easy, mildly radical confidence; here, too many strained attempts at girlish megapop and navel-gazing lyrics about body image take the place of exciting music.

Download: “Don’t Bother,” “Animal City,” “Something”