FEATURE:
Second Spin
Nelly Furtado - Whoa, Nelly!
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THERE are some pretty big albums…
that will be turning twenty later this year – no less Radiohead’s Kid A! Among those albums approaching twenty, I wonder how many people will nod to Nelly Furtado’s Whoa, Nelly! It was released on 24th October (2000), and it did get some good reviews when it arrived, but there were some who were not too kind; others felt that the album had some good moments but was no more than the sum of its singles. I think a lot of people buzzed at the time, but few talked about Whoa, Nelly! years later. If you want an album that is diverse and unique, then Whoa, Nelly! is a perfect place to start. The debut album from the Canadian singer-songwriter, Whoa, Nelly! peaked at number twenty-four on the US Billboard 200 chart. It produced three international singles: I'm Like a Bird, Turn Off the Light, and ...on the Radio (Remember the Days). Whilst one cannot call Whoa, Nelly! underrated, one can definitely say that it is under-looked in regards the great albums of 2000; few rank Whoa, Nelly! with the best albums of the '00s. Nelly Furtado wrote seven of the album’s twelve tracks solo – she co-wrote the other five with Gerald Eaton and Brian West (the album’s hits and best cuts were Furtado’s alone). Although many embraced Furtado in 2000, some thought her a bit tricky to pigeonhole or a bit of an oddity.
This is what NME wrote in their review of Whoa, Nelly!
“Whether she’ll be a musical one is more tricky. Which – as it’s already on heavy rotation – makes her decision to call another song ‘Shit On The Radio (Remember The Days)’ just a little rich. Or it would be, if that song didn’t prove Nelly has just enough alternative style to give it a backbone of R&B steeliness. Meanwhile, ‘Baby Girl’ is sweeter, with fiesta horns and an electro-smooth take on Destiny’s Child’s lyrical concerns. Opener ‘Hey, Man!’ sounds like The Sundays gone Mardi Gras crazy. Lord. Allowing bonus points for successfully merging personal lyrics and shuffling beats without once evoking lazy trip-hop, she still too often confuses blandness for adult sophistication. There’s enough here, however, to suggest she could become a less irritatingly prima donna Jennifer Lopez, or an interesting, beat-driven Dido. All she need do is refine her musical syntax”.
To me, Whoa, Nelly! is an artist entering a new decade and not following what happened in the 1990s. Furtado’s debut album incorporates a number of styles, but she manages to weave them all together around her incredible voice. It is the way Furtado punctuates and elongates; how some lines flow free, whist other stutter and delay. Not only is the delivery unique, but Furtado’s language and songwriting is very much her own! There is this clash of uplifting choruses and more emotive lyrics. The singles, I'm Like a Bird, and Turn Off the Light sound incredible and get you singing along, but they are a lot deeper than that and, when you look at the lyrics, there is more than meets the eye.
Whoa, Nelly! is a very personal album to Nelly Furtado, but she can be honest and free without being too glib or overly-serious. The album has this wonderful mix of the thought-provoking and challenging with the colourful and frivolous. In their review of 2011, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“Nelly Furtado's Whoa, Nelly! is one of those albums that's designed to be a surprising, precocious debut -- the kind of record that's meant to make a listener exclaim, well, "whoa nelly" upon the first spin. From that first play, it's evident that Furtado is indeed an audacious songwriter, not at all hesitant to bare her emotions, tackle winding melodies, and bend boundaries to the point that much of the record sounds like folk-pop tinged with bossa nova and backed by a production designed for TLC. Clearly, this is a musician with big, serious ambitions, a notion that is supported not only by her naked lyrics but especially by her singing. Furtado is a restless vocalist, skitting and scatting with abandon, spitting out rapid repetitions, bending notes, and frequently indulging in melismas. This, more than anything, makes her a bit of an acquired taste, since her relentless vocalizing can obscure hooks that are nevertheless there.
Once you appreciate (or grow to understand) her quirks, Whoa, Nelly! unfolds as a rewarding, promising debut, albeit one with its flaws. True, most of those flaws arise from its naïveté: a tendency to push too hard, whether it's in piecing together genres in an attempt to create something original or lyrics that can sound a little sophomoric in their soul-searching. These don't arrive in isolated instances, either -- they're wound into the songs themselves. You either choose to be annoyed by these quirks or become charmed by them, realizing it's a first album, and savoring the talent that's apparent on much of the album. Many of her blends of pop, folk, dance, and Latin are beguiling; she has a knack for strong pop hooks (particularly on "On the Radio," "Well, Well," and "Turn Off the Light"); her lyrical imagery can be evocative; she has a sly sense of humor; and, when she doesn't get carried away, she's an inventive, endearingly eccentric vocalist. These are the things that endure after that first slightly bewildering spin of Whoa, Nelly! and those are the things that make you wonder where she goes from here”.
I still think Whoa, Nelly! sounds unusual and original, as very few artists have managed to equal the magic and impressions on Nelly Furtado’s debut! Before Nelly Furtado came onto the scene, I don’t think there were many artists doing what she was in terms of the style and sounds being incorporated. I have a lot of affection for Whoa, Nelly!, as it was an album I encountered when I was in college. I listen to tracks like Turn Off the Light, and it takes me back to time.
Although Nelly Furtado released her sixth studio album, The Ride, in 2017, I feel she flies highest on her debut. Nearly twenty years after its release, Whoa, Nelly! continues to dazzle and amaze. I do not hear many of its tracks on the radio, either. I might catch I’m Like a Bird now and then, but consider non-singles like Baby Girl, Trynna Finda Way, and Party, and there are some stunners in there. Whilst Whoa, Nelly!’s biggest hitters occur in the first half of the album – all four singles are included in the first six songs -, there is plenty to love in the second half. From the wonderful opener of Hey, Man!, to the closer that is Scared of You, Whoa, Nelly! is a beautiful album with no filler! I discovered an interesting article written two years ago that talks about the impact of Whoa, Nelly! eighteen years after its release:
“Today, pop feels less gatekept than it used to. Calling someone “pop” no longer relegates them to the realm of boy bands and J-14 magazine. Lady Gaga is pop. Mitski is pop. Even Cardi B is pop, now that hip-hop is the most popular genre in the country. But women in music are still burdened with pushing back against oversimplified media categorizations, particularly in a time where pithy headlines get more attention than whatever nuanced set of words will follow them.
Eighteen years later, Whoa, Nelly!’s subversiveness is easier to parse. Its influence has come into clearer focus, as female artists, queer artists, and genre-defying iconoclasts pummel expectations of how a popular artist should look and sound. Unlike Furtado, they have a safety net in the Wild West of the Internet that did not exist back when labels still dictated who became famous or didn’t. With her 2017 independent album The Ride, Furtado continues to be every bit as ungraspable as she was in 2000, veering away from the artist we knew on Loose, and embracing sounds as disparate as stripped-down indie rock and industrial-tinged dance music. Critics praised the effort, with Billboard going so far as to call it “the most slept-on release of 2017.” But that ability to experiment was truly honed at the turn of the century with her debut. Whoa, Nelly! may never be celebrated as the work of feminist rebellion that it is—but as Furtado expresses on the album, she wasn’t vying for our approval anyway”.
I do think Whoa, Nelly! gained a lot of applause in 2000, but there was not too much focus on it after that; or at least people do not really look back on Nelly Furtado’s debut albums as one of the best from that decade! I would encourage people to listen to the album, as it is a wonderful work from an artist who was such a breath of fresh air compared to everything else that was out there in 2000. The powerful and sensational Whoa, Nelly! is such…
A wonderful debut album.