Nelly Kim Furtado
(born December 2, 1978) is a Juno Award-winning Canadian
singer, songwriter, record producer, and
instrumentalist.
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 after
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)". Since then, Furtado has sold over fifteen
million albums worldwide.
Furtado is known for experimenting with different
instruments, sounds, genres, languages, and nasal vocal
styles. This diversity has been influenced by her
wide-ranging musical taste and her interest in different
cultures.
Early years: Nelly Furtado was born in Victoria,
British Columbia to Portuguese immigrants from Azores,
Maria Manuela and António José Furtado. She was named
after Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim. Furtado first sang at
the age of four when she performed a duet with her
mother at a church on Portugal Day. 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.
The first musicians Furtado interacted with were
underground rappers and DJs. At the end of the summer of
11th grade during a visit to Toronto, 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, the 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!: 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 Indian, and
half Portuguese.
2003–2005: Folklore: Furtado's second album,
Folklore, was released in November 2003. The title was
influenced by her parents' immigration to Canada. 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.
2006-2007: Loose: 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 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 criticize her for having to "sex up"
her music and appearance in order to sell more records.
Furtado and Justin Timberlake are featured on
Timbaland's single "Give It to Me". This song
became her third number-one single on the Billboard Hot
100 charts. Her first number one single was
"Promiscuous", followed by "Say It
Right".
In late November 2006, Furtado revealed that she once
turned down US $500,000 to pose nude in Playboy.
Furtado announced in December 2006 that she would record
an all-Spanish album. As of April 2007, however,
Furtado's plans have changed. During an interview with a
member of the Canadian press, Furtado mentioned that her
Latin album has, for the time being, been shelved
(without further explanation).[citation needed] While
she still hopes to release a full-length,
Spanish-language project one day, she will, until then,
re-release Loose in the United States (and possibly
Latin America) with Spanish versions of "All Good
Things (Come To An End)" "Try" and
"In God's Hands," all of which she wrote and
recorded with Julio Reyes. No release date for the new
version of "Loose" has been given.
On December 31, 2006, Furtado sang at a concert
alongside Indian singers at Andheri Sports Centre in
Mumbai, India, sponsored by Nokia. She performed
"Say It Right" and "Promiscuous"
(with Saukrates) on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live
on February 23, 2007. On February 16, 2007, Furtado
embarked in Manchester on her Get Loose Tour. Furtado
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 and a host for
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.
In July 2006, Loose topped the UWC charts as the #1
album world wide, and after nine months it came back to
the number one spot in April 2007.
Influences: During her teenage years, Furtado
embraced many musical genres, listening heavily to
mainstream R&B, hip hop, alternative rock, New Wave,
alternative hip hop, 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, Caetano Veloso,
Esthero, Amalia Rodrigues, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,
Cornershop, TLC, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Digable
Planets, De La Soul, Radiohead, Oasis, 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".
Toronto and experiencing musical diversity:
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 fifteen and continues to
discover new genres. On a 2006 Rolling Stone issue, she
commented about her diverse taste:
“ 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 "Some
Buried Bones" episode of CSI: NY as Ava Brandt, a
master-thief and victim of domestic abuse. The episode
also featured her songs "Maneater" and
"All Good Things (Come to an End)". She also
guest starred on an episode of the day time soap opera,
One Life to Live where she performed some of her songs
in a local club.
Nelly Furtado Profile,
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