Nelly Furtado

“If I expect this all to be there, like a next record, or whatever, then I’m pretty much screwed.” -Nelly Furtado, on the hype surrounding her debut

Nelly Kim Furtado (born December 2, 1978) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, record producer, and instrumentalist of Portuguese descent.Furtado came to fame in 2000 with the release of her debut album Whoa, Nelly!, which featured her breakthrough Grammy Award-winning single “I’m Like a Bird”. After becoming a mother and releasing the less commercially successful Folklore (2003), she returned to prominence in 2006 with the release of Loose and its hit singles “Promiscuous” ,”Maneater”, “Say It Right”, and “All Good Things (Come to an End)”.Furtado is known for experimenting with different instruments, sounds, genres, languages, and vocal styles. This diversity has been influenced by her wide-ranging musical taste and her interest in different cultures.

Biography

Early years
Nelly Furtado was born in Victoria, British Columbia to Portuguese immigrants from the Azores, Maria Manuela and António José Furtado.She was named after Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim.Raised in a Roman Catholic home, Furtado first sang at the age of four when she performed a duet with her mother at a church on Portugal Day. Although remaining unclear about her religious beliefs, she still affirms a belief in God, the Ten Commandments, and in avoiding the Seven Sins.She began playing instruments at the age of nine, learning the trombone, ukulele and, in later years, the guitar and keyboard. At the age of twelve, she began writing songs,and as a teenager, she performed in a Portuguese marching band.Furtado has acknowledged her family as the source of her strong work ethic; she spent eight summers working as a chambermaid with her mother, who was a housekeeper in Victoria.She has stated that coming from a working class background has shaped her identity in a positive way.The first musicians Furtado interacted with were underground rappers and DJs.During a visit to Toronto the summer after eleventh grade, Furtado met Tallis Newkirk, member of the hip hop group, Crazy Cheese. She contributed vocals to their 1996 album, Join the Ranks, on the track “Waitin’ 4 the Streets”.After graduating from Mount Douglas Secondary School in 1996, she moved to Toronto. The following year, she formed Nelstar, a trip hop duo with Newkirk. Ultimately, Furtado felt the trip-hop style of the duo was “too segregated” and believed it did not represent her personality or allow her to showcase her vocal ability.She left the group and planned to move back home.Before moving, however, she performed at the 1997 Honey Jam, an “all-female urban” talent show.Her performance attracted the attention of The Philosopher Kings singer Gerald Eaton (aka Jarvis Church), who then approached her to write with him. He and fellow Kings member Brian West helped Furtado produce a demo. She left Toronto, but returned again to record more material with Eaton and West. The material recorded during these sessions led to her 1999 record deal with DreamWorks Records.Furtado’s first single, “Party’s Just Begun (Again)”, was released that year on the Brokedown Palace: Music from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.

2000–2002: Whoa, Nelly! and early success
Main article: Whoa, Nelly!
Furtado continued the collaboration with Eaton and West, who co-produced her debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, released in October 2000. Following the release of the album, Furtado headlined the Burn in the Spotlight tour and also appeared on Moby’s Area:One tour.The album was an international success, supported by three international singles, “I’m Like a Bird”, “Turn off the Light”, and “…On the Radio (Remember the Days)”. It received four Grammy nominations in 2002, and her debut single won for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Furtado’s work was also critically acclaimed for her innovative mixture of various genres and sounds. Slant magazine called the album “a delightful and refreshing antidote to the army of ‘pop princesses’ and rap-metal bands that had taken over popular music at the turn of the millennium.”

Motherhood
On September 20, 2003 in Toronto, Furtado gave birth to a daughter, Nevis, whose father is DJ Jasper Gahunia. Furtado and Gahunia, who had been good friends for several years, remained together for four years until their breakup in 2005. Furtado told Blender magazine that they continue to be good friends and jointly share responsibility of raising Nevis. Nevis is ethnically a quarter Filipino, a quarter Asian Indian, and half Portuguese.

2003–2005: Folklore
Folklore (2003)
Folklore (album)
Furtado’s second album, Folklore, was released in November 2003. The title was influenced by her parents’ immigration to Canada. Folclore [fOlk’lOrI] means the same in Portuguese as it does in English, but occurs much more frequently, in any reference to traditional culture. The final track on the album, “Childhood Dreams”, was dedicated to her daughter. The album includes the single “Força” (meaning “strength” or “carry on” in Portuguese), the official anthem of the 2004 European Football Championship. Furtado performed this song in Lisbon at the championship’s final, in which the Portugal national team played. Other singles included “Powerless (Say What You Want)” and the ballad “Try”.
The album was not as successful as her debut, partly due to the album’s less “poppy” sound, but also due to changes at DreamWorks Records. DreamWorks had just been sold to Universal Music Group. In 2005, DreamWorks Records, along with many of its artists including Furtado, were absorbed into Geffen Records..

2006–Present: Loose
Loose (2006)
Furtado’s third album was released in June 2006. She named it Loose after the spontaneous, creative decisions she made while creating the album. Four lead singles were released in different regions of the world: the Spanish reggaeton-influenced “No Hay Igual” (featuring Calle 13), the hip-hop “Promiscuous” (featuring Timbaland) , for which she won a 2006 Billboard Music Award for Pop Single of the Year, the Latin “Te Busqué” (featuring Juanes), and the dark pop single “Maneater”. In this album, primarily produced by Timbaland, Furtado experiments with sounds from R&B, hip hop, and 80s music. She categorized the album’s sound as punk-hop, described as “modern, poppy, spooky” and as having “a mysterious, after-midnight vibe… extremely visceral”. She attributed the youthful sound of the album to the presence of her two-year old daughter. Loose has become the most successful album of Furtado’s career so far. It reached number-one in several countries including the United States and Canada, and it included the hit singles “Promiscuous”, “Maneater”, “Te Busqué”, “Say It Right”, and “All Good Things (Come to an End)”. The album received generally positive reviews from critics, with some citing the “revitalising” effect of Timbaland on Furtado’s music, and others calling it “slick, smart and surprising.” Some have labeled her a “sell out” for seemingly abandoning her folk and rock roots in favor of hip hop and R&B, while others have criticized her for attempting to “sex up” her music and appearance to sell more records.
In 2007, Furtado and Justin Timberlake were featured on Timbaland’s single “Give It To Me”, became her third number-one single in the US and second in the UK. In late November 2006, Furtado revealed that she once turned down US $500,000 to pose nude in Playboy. On February 16, 2007, Furtado embarked on the Get Loose Tour. She returned in March 2007 to her hometown of Victoria, British Columbia to perform a concert at the Save-On Foods Memorial Centre. In honor of her visit, local leaders officially proclaimed March 21, 2007, the first day of spring, as Nelly Furtado Day. On April 1, 2007 Furtado was a performer at and host of the 2007 Juno Awards in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She won all five awards for which she was nominated, including “Album of the Year” and “Single of the Year”.

Sexuality
In June 2006, in an interview with Genre magazine, when asked if she had “ever felt an attraction to women”, Furtado replied “Absolutely. Women are beautiful and sexy.” She also said the idea that everyone was inherently bisexual made sense to her and agreed with Kurt Cobain’s statement that “everyone is gay” from Nirvana’s “All Apologies”. Some considered this an announcement of bisexuality, but in August 2006, she confirmed that she was “straight, but very open-minded”. She commented that she was slightly embarrassed by the quotes and stated, “I guess I was humouring the journalist a little and I was reading a book about Chinese medicine, and we went off on a tangent.”

nfluences
During her teenage years, Furtado embraced many musical genres, listening heavily to mainstream R&B, hip hop, alternative rock, New Wave, alternative hip hop, drum and bass, trip hop, world music (including Portuguese fado, Brazilian bossa nova, and Indian music), and a variety of others.Her influences have included Jeff Buckley, Janet Jackson, Oasis, Caetano Veloso, Esthero, Amalia Rodrigues, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Cornershop, TLC, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Digable Planets, De La Soul, Radiohead, Madonna, Beyoncé, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Verve, U2, Enya and Beck.
Furtado’s music has also been influenced by her current residence, Toronto, which she calls “the most multicultural city in the entire world” and a place where she “can be any culture”. Regarding Toronto’s cultural diversity, she has said that she did not have to wait for the Internet revolution to learn about world music; she began listening to it at the age of five and continues to discover new genres.
“I always know there’s a new genre left to discover. For me, it’s like a metaphor for life. I feel like if you can get down with any style of music, you can get down with any style of person. So it’s fun for me—I get to expose my fans to different vibes and they, in turn, open their minds too. I’m always undergoing mind-opening.”

Acting career
Furtado began acting in school plays in middle school. She appeared on the episode “Some Buried Bones” of CSI: NY as Ava Brandt, a master-thief and victim of domestic abuse. She also guest starred on an episode of the day time soap opera One Life to Live, on which she performed some of her songs in a local club with Saukrates. Furtado participated in the hit Portuguese soap opera Floribella.

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