Nelly Furtado

Template:Infobox musical artist 2 Nelly Kim Furtado (born December 2 1978) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, instrumentalist, record producer, and occasional actress.

Furtado came to fame in 2000 with the release of her debut album Whoa, Nelly!, selling over 6 million copies worldwide, it featured the Grammy Award-winning single "I'm Like a Bird" and "Turn off the Light". In 2003 Furtado gave birth to a daughter and released her sophomore album Folklore although it was not as successful as Whoa, Nelly!, it still managed to hit platinum in 2 countries and gold in over 5 other countries, including USA, UK and The Netherlands. Furtado returned to prominence in 2006 with the release of Loose and its hit singles, "Promiscuous" and "Maneater".

Furtado is known for her musical eclecticism, continually 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 and influences

Furtado, a first-generation Canadian, was born as one of three children to Maria Manuela and Antonio Jose Furtado, working class Portuguese parents (from São Miguel Island in the Azores), in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. 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 church on Portugal Day. She began playing instruments at the age of nine, learning the trombone and ukulele and in later years, the guitar and keyboard. She began writing songs at the age of twelve and as a teenager, she played in a Portuguese marching band.

Furtado's parents emigrated from Portugal to Canada in the late 1970s. She has stated that visiting her parents' birthplace, the Azores, as a child and experiencing its culture and learning the Portuguese language has made her an open-minded person. This has strongly influenced her artistry as she has incorporated many cultural sounds into her music; it is also evident in her multilingualism as she can speak English, Portuguese, and to a lesser extent Spanish and Hindi. She has acknowledged her parents for instilling a hardcore work ethic; she spent eight summers working as a chambermaid with her mother, who was a housekeeper. She has stated that coming from this working-class background has also shaped her identity in a positive way.

During these years, Furtado embraced many musical genres, heavily listening to mainstream R&B/hip hop, alternative rock, Fado, Brazilian music (especially bossa nova), alternative hip hop, and a variety of others. Her influences have included Jeff Buckley, Caetano Veloso, Amalia Rodrigues, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Cornershop, Mariah Carey, TLC, Mary J. Blige, Digable Planets, De La Soul, Radiohead, Oasis, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Verve, U2, and Beck.

The first musicians Furtado interacted with were underground rappers and DJs. During a visit to Toronto after the summer of eleventh grade, she met Tallis Newkirk, member of hip hop group Plains of Fascination and contributed vocals to their 1996 album Join the Ranks on the track "Waitin' 4 the Streets". She spent the rest of that summer in Portugal, opening her mind to native rock acts. She then returned to British Columbia to finish high school and later moved to Toronto where she eventually formed the trip hop duo Nelstar in 1997 with Newkirk. The experience led Furtado back to her hip hop influences and allowed her to become more comfortable with writing her own melodies and rhymes. Although, "Like", one of the songs Nelstar recorded, received a VideoFACT grant to cover for the production of a music video, 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 decided to move back home.

Before moving, she performed at the 1997 Honey Jam, a female, mostly-black talent show at Toronto nightclub Lee's Palace. She performed to a Digital Audio Tape in jeans and a t-shirt. At the club, The Philosopher Kings singer Gerald Eaton (aka Jarvis Church) was impressed with her performance and approached her to write with him. Eaton and fellow Kings member Brian West, collectively known as Track and Field, helped Furtado produce a demo, but Furtado already had plans to backpack through Europe and return home to take creative writing courses at Camosun College. She stayed in touch with Eaton and West who insisted that she return to Toronto to record more material. She eventually returned for two weeks; the material recorded during those sessions led to Furtado's record deal with DreamWorks Records in 1999.

Whoa, Nelly! (2000–2002)

File:Whoanelly.jpg

Whoa, Nelly! (2000)

Furtado continued to collaborate with Eaton and West, who co-produced Furtado's debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, which was released in October 2000. The album saw major success all over the globe supported by its three singles, "I'm Like a Bird", "Turn off the Light", and "...On the Radio (Remember the Days)". The album received four Grammy nominations in 2002; Furtado's debut single won for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Furthermore, Furtado was 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". The sound of the album was strongly influenced by musicians who had traversed cultures and "the challenge of making heartfelt, emotional music that's upbeat and hopeful". Following the release of the album, Furtado headlined the Burn in the Spotlight tour and also appeared on Moby's Area:One tour.

Folklore (2003–2005)

Before the release of her sophomore album, Furtado gave birth to her first child, daughter Nevis (named for the Caribbean island, Nevis, on which she was conceived), on September 20 2003 in Toronto. She had a home birth with midwives. The father is Furtado's then-boyfriend and live DJ, Jasper Gahunia aka Lil' Jaz. Discussing her motherhood in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Furtado said, "It's actually pretty incredible. It's a lot more instinctual than I thought". Furtado and Gahunia were together for four years and friends for several years before that. She told Blender magazine, "We're fully active co-parents and really close friends, so things are irie".

Furtado's second album, Folklore, was released in November 2003. The title was influenced by her parents immigration to Canada, "when I look at my old photo albums, I see pictures of their brand-new house, their shiny new car, their first experiences going to very North American-type places like Kmart. When you have that in your blood, you never really part with it—it becomes your own personal folklore." The album, similarly to her debut album, also displayed a diverse sound but with a more rock-oriented, acoustic approach. As Furtado focused more on the songwriting rather "than on frenetically switching genres five times in one song", BBC felt that it had "twice the originality" of her debut. Furtado attributed the mellowness of the album to the fact that she was pregnant during most of its recording. The final track on the album, "Childhood Dreams", is dedicated to her daughter.

The album includes the single "Força" (means "strength" or "carry on" in Portuguese), which was written as the official anthem of the 2004 European Football Championship. Furtado performed the song at the championship's final in Lisbon, Portugal in July 2004. Other singles included the ballad "Try" and "Powerless (Say What You Want)", in which Furtado embraces her Portuguese heritage; the song deals with "the idea that you can still feel like a minority inside, even if you don't look like one on the outside".

The album was not as successful as her debut, partly due to troubles at DreamWorks Records and the less poppy sound. It lacked promotion as DreamWorks was sold to Universal Music Group at the time of Folkore' s release. In 2005, DreamWorks Records was shut down, and many of its artists including Furtado were absorbed into Geffen Records.

Loose (2006–present)

File:Loose cover.jpg

Loose (2006)

Furtado's third album, Loose, was released in June 2006. It was named after the spontaneous, creative decisions Furtado faced while creating the album. Three lead singles were released in different parts of the world: the Spanish reggaeton-influenced "No Hay Igual", the hip hop "Promiscuous" (featuring Timbaland), and the pop "Maneater". For the first time, Furtado worked with a variety of record producers and followed a more collaborative and commercial approach in creating the album. The album, mostly produced by Timbaland, showed Furtado experimenting with a more R&B–hip hop sound and the "surreal, theatrical elements of '80s music". She has categorized the album's sound as punk-hop, which she describes as "this modern, poppy, spooky music" and stated that "there's a mysterious, after-midnight vibe to [it] that's extremely visceral". Furtado attributed the youthful sound of the album to the presence of her two-year old daughter.

Loose became the most successful album of Furtado's career, reaching number-one in several countries including the United States and Canada. Its singles, "Promiscuous" and "Maneater", reached number-one in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, respectively.

Furtado will make her acting debut in the independent drama Nobody's Hero, to be released in 2006. She plays an American Muslim who is the love interest of a young soldier who has returned from the Iraq War.

Discography

Albums

Title	Release date	Chart positions
		US	UK	CA	AUS	GER	SWI	IRL	MEX	NL
Whoa, Nelly!	24 October 2000	24	2	2	4	14	6	6	8	12
Folklore	25 November 2003	38	11	18	98	4	13	-	4	7
Loose	9 June 2006	1	5	1	-	1	1	14	6	7

Singles

Title	Release date	Album	Chart positions
			US	UK	CA	AUS	MEX	ARG	GER	IRL	NL	PHI	EST
"I'm Like a Bird"	28 November 2000	Whoa, Nelly!	9	5	1	2	4	-	41	4	4	10	-
"Turn off the Light"	14 August 2001	Whoa, Nelly!	5	4	1	7	2	-	31	5	7	7	-
"...On the Radio (Remember the Days)"	3 December 2001	Whoa, Nelly!	-	18	1	53	3	-	67	22	7	16	-
"Hey, Man"	16 July 2002	Whoa, Nelly!	-	-	-	-	-	-	49	-	-	-	-
"Powerless (Say What You Want)"	8 December 2003	Folklore	-	13	1	37	18	1	8	36	5	18	-
"Try"	15 March 2004	Folklore	-	15	1	-	1	1	31	-	10	20	-
"Força"	14 June 2004	Folklore	-	40	6	-	12	1	9	-	3	-	-
"Explode"	27 September 2004	Folklore	-	-	4	-	154	-	34	-	13	-	-
"The Grass Is Green"	28 February 2005	Folklore	-	-	-	-	-	-	65	-	-	-	-
"No Hay Igual"	18 April 2006	Loose	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
"Promiscuous"	25 April 2006	Loose	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
"Maneater"	26 May 2006	Loose	-	1	-	-	10	-	4	3	11	-	1
"Say It Right"	TBA 2006	Loose	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Other releases

• "Party's Just Begun (Again)" (2000, 12" vinyl promo single)
• AOL Sessions (2004, 4-track digital EP, exclusively available at iTunes)

Collaborations

• "Waitin' 4 the Streets" on Plains of Fascination's Join the Ranks (1996)
• "I Feel You" featuring Esthero on Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird" single (2001)
• "Turn off the Light" (Remix) featuring Ms. Jade and Timbaland on Nelly Furtado's "Turn off the Light" single (2001)
• "What's Going On" on Artists Against AIDS' What's Going On (2001)
• "Get Ur Freak On" (Remix) by Missy Elliott on Lara Croft: Tomb Raider O.S.T. (2001)
• "Instant Karma" (Live) with Dave Stewart on Come Together - A Night For John Lennon's Words And Music DVD (2001)
• "Thin Line" on Jurassic 5's Power In Numbers (2002)
• "Fotografía" on Juanes' Un Día Normal (2002)
• "Sacrifice" on The Roots' Phrenology (2002)
• "Breathe" on Swollen Members' Monsters In The Closet (2002)
• "The Harder They Come" on Paul Oakenfold's Bunkka (2002)
• "Trés Fly" on Tallisman's 80 Million Isms (2002)
• "Fine Line" on Jarvis Church's Shake It Off (2002)
• "Ching Ching" on Ms. Jade's Girl Interrupted (2002)
• "Powerless (Say What You Want)" (Spanish version) featuring Juanes on Nelly Furtado's "Força" single (2004)
• "Quando, Quando, Quando" on Michael Bublé's It's Time (2005)
• "Friendamine" on Jelleestone's The Hood Is Here (2005)

External links

• NellyFurtado.com — official site
• NellyFurtadoMusic.co.uk — official UK site
• burninthespotlight.com — official fan forum/news blog
• Nelly Furtado at MySpace
• MTV in:DEPTH Nelly Furtado
• Nelly Furtado bio and photos
• Nelly Furtado lyrics