FEATURE:
Remember the Days
In Celebration of Nelly Furtado
__________
THIS is not especially tied…
to a big anniversary, though I am looking ahead to 25th April. That is when Nelly Furtado’s single, Promiscuous, turns twenty. The second single from her third studio album, Loose, is was a big shift from her previous album, Folklore. I think Furtado’s albums are hugely underrated considering how successful they are and how wonderful an artist she is. I am going to include a playlist featuring songs from her seven studio albums. I am going to come to her 2000 debut album, Woah, Nelly!, and why it is so important to me. Drop in some videos from the album too. I will start off by talking about the main reason for covering Nelly Furtado. Many might know her only from early singles like I’m Like a Bird (from Woah, Nelly!), but she had this varied and hugely exciting career. It is such a joyful and enriching experience listening to her music, I was compelled to spotlight her. I am not sure whether she has in mind a follow-up to 2024’s 7. Although critically acclaimed, it did feature quite a few other writers. Previous albums more streamlined, with Furtado’s songwriting voice much more central. However, perhaps after some slightly mixed reviews from critics for previous albums, there was a shift. However, Nelly Furtado’s albums are all fantastic. The way she shifts and grows between them and explores different themes and sounds. Promiscuous was one of the standouts from an album that saw her release something bolder and more sexual. A beautiful and hugely interesting album, Promiscuous certainly got a lot of coverage. I remember when the single came out. I had been a fan of Nelly Furtado for almost six years to that point and did not expect what she dropped with Promiscuous.
Last year, this incredible article told us the story behind Promiscuous. It was a new era for the amazing Canadian artist. With production from Timbaland, this track still sounds phenomenal nearly twenty years later. Though Woah, Nelly! Is my favourite album from her, I really love Loose. I will come to an interview with Furtado from 2006 before going back to her debut:
“Nelly Furtado emerged at the turn of the millennium, standing out by opting out of 2000’s dance-pop, nu-metal, and neo-soul trends. Rather, the Canadian-born singer’s debut album Whoa, Nelly! was a chilled fusion of pop, folk, Latin, and trip-hop. Featuring Top 10 singles “I’m Like a Bird” and “Turn Off The Light” (the former earning a Grammy award), Furtado was a refreshing alternative to the bubblegum pop princesses of the time.
The singer followed up with 2003’s Folklore, an exploration of her Portuguese heritage. It ultimately proved to be a sophomore slump compared to the double-Platinum success of Whoa, Nelly!. So she called on music’s secret weapon – producer/artist Timbaland – to re-launch her career. The result was 2006’s Loose, a celebration of female sexuality that meshed electronica, pop, hip-hop, reggaéton, and R&B. Its title is inspired by the off-the-wall ideas Timbaland, Danja (Timbaland’s protégé at the time), and Furtado conjured inside the studio.
The trio created hits like the electropop-inspired “Maneater,” the Grammy-nominated No. 1 “Say It Right,” and the introspective ballad “All Good Things (Come to an End).” But the album’s standout is lead single, “Promiscuous,” which set the tone for Furtado’s musical reinvention.
“Promiscuous” was a departure, swapping folk for in-your-face sex appeal. It’s a flirtatious duet between herself and Timbaland, both trading naughty one-liners atop a pulsating rap melody. And for the Director X-helmed video, Furtado took it to the nightclub. Along with the director himself, Justin Timberlake and Keri Hilson (frequent collaborators of Timbaland) make guest appearances.
“I remember being a bit shy to put it out. That was probably the content, the fact that it’s called ‘Promiscuous.’ I hadn’t done anything wrong but women are always judged,” Furtado told FADER in 2016. “I’ve since changed my mind about that. By the time ‘Promiscuous’ came out, I was super happy. I always felt like the male and female voices were equals. It was created in that tradition of a TLC or a Salt-N-Pepa song, where the women are assertive and just like, ‘I’m okay with my sexuality.’”
Furtado’s willingness to experiment led to her first No. 1 hit on Billboard’s Hot 100. The song was on top for six consecutive weeks. The single also earned a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals and won a Billboard Music Award for Pop 100 Single of the Year. “Promiscuous” had a resurgence in late 2020, entering Billboard’s Global 200 chart thanks to its popularity on TikTok”.
In June 2006, Entertainment Weekly spoke with Nelly Furtado about Loose. As they write, Furtado “talks about Paris Hilton, music contracts and touring with a baby”. Released on 7th June, 2006, I wonder whether Furtado will mark twenty years of Loose. Like all of her albums, I am so engrossed by its tracks. Other standouts such as Maneater and Te Busqué:
“After a debut CD, 2000’s Whoa, Nelly!, that sold 2 million copies and made her a worldwide star at 22, Furtado’s follow-up, Folklore, failed to click with listeners and sold just 500,000 units. ”It had a lot of cynicism,” she admits. ”People were wondering, ‘Where’s Nelly? Where’s the butterflies?”’
Nearly three years later, there’s still no sign of butterflies, but Furtado has emerged from her cocoon with the aptly named Loose (out June 20), a confidently sexy mix of party anthems and slow jams. As the first single, ”Promiscuous,” and its follow-up ”Maneater” (a song so hot a speaker caught fire while she was recording it) show, the 27-year-old isn’t beholden to fans of her airy breakthrough hit, ”I’m Like a Bird.” ”It’s not about how big my audience is,” she explains. ”It’s about having an audience that understands what I’m doing. I’m not faithful to one style? I’m a musically promiscuous girl.” And with the soaring popularity of ”Promiscuous” and its steamy video featuring Justin Timberlake, Furtado is proving an old maxim: Getting around can do a career good.
”To me, Nelly’s like Pat Benatar or Fleetwood Mac,” says rapper-producer Timothy ”Timbaland” Mosley, who co-piloted the making of Loose. ”She’s timeless and can do different kinds of styles.” That’s been evident since Whoa, Nelly!‘s quirky amalgam of pop, folk, bossa nova, and Latin sounds. Still, that album collected dust for several months before ”I’m Like a Bird” took flight up the charts and thrust Furtado into the spotlight. ”It was like being thrown into a circus,” she says of the experience. ”I matured really quickly. I think that’s why you see a lot of young entertainers getting engaged or settling down — they mature hyper-fast.”
Sure enough, Furtado soon fell in love with Jasper ”Lil’ Jaz” Gahunia, a DJ, and got pregnant in Dec. 2002. She wanted to keep recording, but the timing was curious: Furtado started work on Folklore five months into her pregnancy. ”Everyone — including my mother — thought it was ridiculous,” she says.
Even as her somber sophomore effort was confounding fans, the singer ”was in the coolest mood,” she says. ”Three weeks after I had my daughter, I had a fitting for The Tonight Show and I fit into like a size 14 pants, but I didn’t care. I had that glow.” With Folklore faring better abroad than in the U.S., Furtado decided to tour with baby — and daddy — in tow. ”I was breast-feeding Nevis and traveling like a gypsy,” Furtado recalls. ”Japan, France, Germany — we have lots to tell her when she’s older.”
Afterward, the Victoria, B.C., native retreated to Toronto and quiet domesticity. She could afford to idle in perpetuity, thanks to financial foresight. When she landed her first deal at age 20, Furtado sacrificed a one-time windfall to retain her publishing rights. “I’ve watched a lot of Behind the Music specials,” she says. “I didn’t want to be Elvis — you know, sign a record deal for a Cadillac.”
Still, a contractual cloud hung over her: She owed her label another album. But Furtado was in no rush to record, until she ended her four-year relationship with Gahunia. As she explains, “When you break up, this overwhelming rush of individualism comes over you — it can be very inspiring.” At the time, Furtado was being prodded by Interscope Records chief Jimmy Iovine to go upbeat. Once she relocated to Miami to write and record, that was a foregone conclusion. “I played with Nevis in the sunshine every day until 7 or 8 p.m., and then I’d hit the studio,” Furtado says.
Working with Timbaland was equally carefree. The two collaborated on the 2001 remix of Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On,” so Furtado trusted his ability to meld genres with syncopated rhythms and melodic stabs. “[Loose] has an ’80s feel with a new twist,” Timbaland says. “It’s old-school new-wave sounds with heavy beats”.
I am going to bring things more up to date. First, I am going to take things back to 2000. After 2006’s Loose and before 2024’s 7, we had a run of three wonderful albums in the form of 2009’s Mi Plan, 2012’s The Spirit Indestructible and 2017’s The Ride. With all of these albums, Furtado refused to play to type and repeat herself. Perhaps what confounded some critics. With everything, she released this incredibly rich music that warranted repeated plays. I especially like The Ride. The last video I will bring in is from 2024. I will get to an interview around that album. I would urge people to check out the three albums I have just mentioned and the videos. The videos are always so memorable! What struck me about the ones from 2000’s Woah, Nelly! is that sense of joy. Furtado singing and dancing in mud and then going to this bright and vibrant neighbourhood where she dances with people there. That was for Turn Off the Light. That single turns twenty-five on 2nd July. The lead single, I’m Like a Bird, has a lot of CG, but it is wonderful! Nelly Furtado dreamy and smiling throughout. Just delightful to watch her emote and sing. A beautifully shot video that stays in the mind. Shit on the Radio (Remember the Days) is bright and neon. Lots of quick cuts, that is quite different to I’m Like a Bird. Not only showing different sides to her sound and lyrics, the aesthetics and visual dynamics shifted. Furtado wrote solo many of the songs on her debut and co-wrote the remainder.
Actually, as there is not a lot in the way of press interviews from 2000, I will instead bring a review in for Woah, Nelly! I would urge people to watch this clip from 2024, where Furtado discussed with Woman’s Hour taking some time out from music and releasing the new album, 7. There is a bit to cover from 2024, as I think it marked a new era. In terms of her direction and where she was in life. However, Woah, Nelly! is one of my favourite albums ever. I was seventeen when it came out and I remember it being a big fixture in my life in 2000 and through 2001. I listen to the album now and it still blows me away! It is such a wonderful album with so many different sounds. Such an exceptional writer and vocalist, I had never heard anyone like her to that point. At a time when mainstream Pop was very samey, Woah, Nelly! was a huge breath of fresh air. In 2018, Flood Magazine wrote why Nelly Furtado's debut album was more radical than you thought – and was a sign of things to come:
“When Nelly Furtado’s Whoa, Nelly! came out in 2000, I was a fourth grader who still had the capacity to be shocked by swear words. That’s one of the first things I remember when I look back on the album’s release and its excellent second track “Shit on the Radio (Remember the Days).” I was one of millions who purchased the album—in my case, begging my mom to buy it for me from a Strawberries sometime after my tenth birthday—and listened to it over and over again, trying to wrap my head around the reaches of her voice, soaring at one point, scatting at another. Each song was sung with the subtle sort of smirk that proved Furtado, as vulnerable as she is in her work, can never really be pegged down.
Whoa, Nelly! is an aughts-era classic that signalled a shift in the kinds of pop stars radio listeners were willing to embrace. Nevertheless, it is often eclipsed in our public memory by Loose, Furtado’s third studio album, largely produced by Timbaland. For many, that album’s hit singles, “Promiscuous” and “Maneater,” marked the arrival of a sexier, more easily digestible Furtado, whom they found incompatible with the artist as they first came to know her. “They sound unlike Furtado not because they’re danceable or sexy—her first two albums were those things—but because they’re about dancing and fucking,” wrote Pitchfork of her new tunes at the time. Audiences loved this album even more than her first two, and Loose remains a critical favorite that has been increasingly appreciated and examined over time.
Contrastingly, the love for Whoa, Nelly!, recorded when Furtado was only twenty-one years old, is hard to come across on its eighteenth anniversary, even with our pervasive cultural nostalgia. That lack of admiration can’t be divorced from the fact that the Furtado we first met was hard to label. She was a pop star, but not a Christina or Britney analogue. Her debut was eclectic, drawing on her roots—her quavering, emotive voice evoking the pathos of traditional Portuguese fado music—among other pop, rock, and hip-hop influences collected from studying music and growing up in Victoria, British Columbia.
But Furtado wasn’t in the same sultry, exotic world Shakira exemplified with her 2001 English-language breakthrough single “Whenever, Wherever.” Furtado was too pop to be an indie music darling (she didn’t play guitar on stage), too eclectic and intriguing to be a pop starlet (she didn’t dance), both talented and unique, but not enough so to be remembered alongside ingenues like M.I.A. or Amy Winehouse. She’s not a Personality, having never been one for tabloids or reality shows, boasting an Instagram account with 126,000 followers and 0 pictures, whereas Shakira is a Guiness record-holder for her massive Facebook following. Her low-key style of fame is, by design, a feminist statement that can be traced directly back to the self she exposed on Whoa, Nelly!: an artist who stands firm in the belief that no person should be reduced to a one-dimensional front.
Listening to the album when I was still in grade school, its view of love, relationships, and individuality seemed to come from another world I was only just beginning to understand, far beyond the simplified schoolyard version of romance that flowed from the mouths of other Top 40 artists. “I’m Like a Bird” is a certified bop about fear of commitment and the threat of losing one’s self to loving another person. “Shit on the Radio” tells of dealing with a partner or friend too insecure to handle Furtado’s career success. “Turn Off the Light” covers the fallout after a breakup, the kind of self-questioning that happens after you lose someone you never even fully opened up to.
The album is a takeoff of the girl-power ethos that started with riot grrl and was co-opted by another group of idols from my youth—the Spice Girls. As Furtado explored specific interpersonal intricacies, she also marked a new era of empowering music by women that was as emotionally unguarded as it was danceable. There was something inherently political in the narratives Furtado weaved across the album, too. The line “I don’t want to be your baby girl” on the track “Baby Girl” was as much a statement to the music promotion machine as it was, within the song, directed at a patriarchal lover.
When I unearthed the CD from my parents’ basement a few years ago, I gave the album a relisten (via a streaming app on my phone) to see if it could enchant me again. And while it sounds less deliciously alien to me with eighteen years’ worth of broadened listening tastes, its expression of the complications inherent in being entwined with another person—how it’s almost never as clear-cut as “I love you” or “Now I don’t”—still feels like a revelation.
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 am going to throw forward to 2024. I love 7 and the fact that Furtado did bring out new material seven years after The Ride. It is forward-looking and modern but also, as critics noted, an album that nodded back to her early-2000s sound. Nearly twenty-five years after her magnificent debut album, 7 sort of blended some of those early threads with where Nelly Furtado was in 2024. Looking and sounding truly incredible, this was a new phase and peak for the hugely inspiring artist. EUPHORIA. put out an amazing cover story for Furtado in 2024. They rightly noted how she turned heads in 2000 with a debut album that was so different to what was expected. Far removed from the homogenised and manufactured Pop of the time. Trip-Hop, Latin, Folk and Worldbeat all combined to magnificent effect:
“As her career evolved with albums such as the hip-hop-infused Loose, her first Spanish album Mi Plan, and the most recent, low-key indie release The Ride, Furtado continued to leave fans gripped for where she might take her sound next. And because of that motive, her artistry has been able to leave a long-lasting impression. That said, after laying low for many years, and her last album released in 2017, many wondered when or if Furtado would ever return to the scene. Explaining that her absence from the spotlight was necessary for her well-being and that she needed a break from the industry side of things, Furtado notes that it was never music itself that she shied away from.
“Never music,” she says enthusiastically. Furtado talks to EUPHORIA. via a video call while at home in Canada. “Music is like my medicine, without sounding cliche. It’s just what I do. It was always my form of escape. As a child, we had a piano and I would sit there and just zone out and go to another world. It is healing for me to make music and it feels so good.”
Fans’ prayers for new material were answered in the spring of 2023 when Furtado began to exhibit her comeback with the gritty club banger, “Eat Your Man.” Collaborating with Dom Dolla for the track, the singer came to know of the Australian DJ and producer after she saw his name on the poster for her first festival booking in six years. “He was on this poster for Beyond The Valley in Australia and immediately the name struck me. I was like, ‘Oh, who’s Dom Dolla?’ Then I listened, I was on vacation at the time, to a couple of records, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love this!’ Then I reached out for him to send me some music and the relationship was born,” Furtado says.
While Furtado’s breakthrough song, “I’m Like A Bird,” came in the form of a folk-pop ballad, some might be unaware that her roots started in the electronic music sphere during the ‘90s. “I started off making a lot of electronic music when I was in my late teens,” she says. A hit song wasn’t the only thing that came out of the link-up with Dolla. The opportunity also opened her eyes to how much the genre has evolved. “I think Dom had a really big impression on me, just meeting him and being around him and seeing what DJs are doing today. We met in 2023, but I’m a fast student. First of all, Dom films everything. His videographers are with him 24 hours a day, they’re always creating these magical moments online because the magic is also happening in real-time.”
The immediacy of electronic and DJ culture has also heavily impacted Furtado’s mindset. “The fact that you can remix something and put it out tomorrow and play it during your show for 20,000 people. And guess what? If they like it, it’s already churning. I’ve been really inspired over the past 18 months by that,” she says.
PHOTO CREDIT: Sami Drasin
Keeping things moving, Furtado arrived at the end of the summer with another joint effort. This time with close industry friends Timbaland and Justin Timberlake for the head-bopping “Keep Going Up.” The trio previously had fans in a chokehold when they dropped the diss track “Give It To Me” in 2007 and topped the charts globally. 16 years later, they were still able to capture the same allure listeners were hoping for. “He is one of my magical collaborators. We just vibe on a whole other level when we’re together,” Furtado says about Timbaland. “We really understand each other musically. Like our brains, it’s weird. We’re kind of cut from the same cloth on some frequency. It’s so beautiful when we’re together. It’s really elevated. And Justin, I’m so proud of. I’m really loving all the new music he’s putting out and it just feels really genuine and beautiful.”
Furtado’s latest single, out March 28, “Gala y Dali,” marks her first release of 2024 and sees her participate in another reunion with Latin star Juanes after they previously struck gold with the ballads “Fotografía” in 2002 and “Te Busque” in 2006. The third time’s a charm for Furtado and Juanes as nearly two decades later they team up again with a summery, sing-a-long song perfect for the beach. “We just have this remarkable history together and the first song we did together [‘Fotografía’] was so well received. It’s just such a loved song and I love putting it in my shows. Of course, we’ve performed it together several times, but it doesn’t end there. We’ve also performed other songs together live from his repertoire and then we did ‘Tu Busque’ and it just kind of took it to a whole other level,” she says.
The origin of how “Gala y Dali” came to life is a fascinating story. Furtado reveals that Juanes had the song over 20 years ago but had previously lost it in a backpack and hadn’t heard it since. “A friend had his backpack sitting around at his house all these years and he finally gave it back to him. Inside the backpack was this brilliant song. It wasn’t completed, so he asked me to record on it,” she explains. After helping develop the song, the pair went into the studio to record. “We recorded it in the same studio that we recorded ‘Te Busque’ as well, so it was a bit like a time warp,” Furtado adds. “There’s just so much nostalgia. We reference ‘Fotografía’ in the song, so we’re self-referencing, which I’m having so much fun with.”
Now, we know what you’re all thinking. After teasing listeners with three collaborations, when will fans finally get to hear Furtado’s long-awaited seventh studio album? The expected answer to that question is: Soon! But no, seriously. The lead single is said to be released in May while the cover art for the album is being shot next month. “That I’m excited about,” Furtado teases. “I can’t reveal too much, but it’s gonna be elevated.”
Having created over 200 songs for the project, Furtado is whittling down which will make the final cut. “We’re currently in the mixing space,” she says. Club bangers can be expected, as well as ballads. No stranger to a bilingual moment, Furtado will also be singing in Spanish. “This current version, it’s about 10 to 20 percent Spanish,” she insists. The motive she’s setting out this time around? Getting shit done. “We’re doing it right. We’re doing all the things,” Furtado says. “We have big plans and I’m so excited about it because I’m in a better head space than ever. I’ve never loved being an entertainer more. I feel like I’m really owning it.”
Her new-found admiration for the job has her enjoying every aspect that she may have previously doubted. “I’m a mom too, and so, as fun as it is being a mom, it can also be stressful. The moment you get to the studio, sometimes my kids come with me and it’s just so beautiful when you can be making music. Immediately, I feel more calm. I feel more myself. I realize that my brain makes so much more sense in the studio. I was officially diagnosed with ADHD a couple of years ago and in the studio, my ADHD feels like a superpower,” she says. The way the industry now navigates during the digital age is also something Furtado prefers. ”Art and commerce, they’ve never gone together,” she says before laughing. “I mean, we’ve done pretty well with it and we have come a long way. In today’s world, it’s all just one thing now.”
Reflecting on her come-up, Furtado states that “the world was a different place back then.” She continues: “The way we promoted records, the way we marketed them, it’s almost like the way we market music now is much more suitable to my personality because it’s way more about just instant moments, you know? Because I have ADHD, it’s like, ‘Okay, great. That’s over. What’s next?’ It’s perfect for me. Before you had to kind of just pick how you were gonna bring your music to people and then stick with it. You couldn’t switch it up or pivot. We have so much more control over how we promote things, which is so cool”.
I have been thinking a lot about Nelly Furtado’s music and the hugely uplifting effect it has on me. How she has released seven very different and magnificent albums. Let’s hope an eighth album comes along. She is differently in this new era. One that is among her very best. I will finish with a review for 7. This GRAMMY interview around the release of 7 is really interesting. How her daughter helped her get back to music. The importance of Furtado’s ADHD diagnosis and why she is having more fun than ever. I will stick with EUPHORIA. and their four-star review of 7:
“Nelly Furtado returns with her first album in seven years. Aptly titled 7, she arrives at a time when we need her the most. With Y2K nostalgia at an all-time high, the Canadian music maker delivers a modern-sounding record that still captures the essence of what we loved about her 2000s discography with a few nods to her fellow pop queens.
Setting the tone nicely with the moody dance anthem “Showstopper,” Furtado keeps up in the clubs with the bilingual “Corazón,” featuring Bomba Estéreo. Infused with Latin beats, reminiscent of 2006’s Loose, Furtado lets herself be free, singing, “We, we lose control / That’s how we are / De corazón, no puedo parar,” during the chorus. For the tasty collaboration with SG Lewis and Tove Lo, “Love Bites,” Furtado gets frisky on an electropop, house-inspired tune that wouldn’t sound out of place on Madonna’s Erotica.
Slowing the pace with multiple mid-tempos and ballads, Furtado knocked it out of the park with “Floodgate.” While barely over 2-minutes long, the dreamy, mellow song is escapism at its best. “Floodgate, open up the well / Full throttle, that love in the front seat / Back seat like it’s champagne drippin’ all over me,” she sings.
For the stripped-back piano ballad “All Comes Back,” Furtado pulls at the heartstrings as she and her collaborator Charlotte Day Wilson detail returning to something they originally walked away from. “Funny how we run to the danger / Like we got a lesson to learn / And we don’t think we deserve it / When happiness ain’t served.” Learning from her mistakes, Furtado recognizes her self-worth as she reveals she’s never been better after healing from past trauma on “Better Than Ever”: “I’m better than ever, you changed the weather / But you made me treasure that we’re not together / All of this pain, I went halfway insane / But I learned from the pain, put myself back together / I’m better than ever, not forever / But I’m better than ever, I’m better than ever.”
Despite a tracklist that is arguably all over the place, Furtado keeps us dancing in between the raw numbers with the Kylie Minogue-esque “Ready For Myself,” yodeling production of “Take Me Down,” which feels like a subtle reference to peer Gwen Stefani and her 2006 single “Wind It Up,” and the album’s third single, “Honesty,” which serves as a 2024 version of Madonna’s “Holiday.”
All in all, 7 is a testament to how diverse, unexpected, and fun Nelly Furtado albums can be. She could have easily sorely banked on nostalgia and asked Timbaland to produce the whole thing for old-time’s sake. Instead, she’s stayed true to the young woman who once sang “I’m not a one-trick pony” two decades ago by continuing to evolve and explore”.
I am a big fan of Nelly Furtado and I wonder what she has in store for this year. It is a shame that Furtado announced an indefinite break from live performance after she was body-shamed last year. This article reacted to that. Furtado looks absolutely fantastic but, as we still live in a horrible and disgusting world where artists, especially women, are expected to be this idea, thin or not be natural or themselves, the comments received have led to this. I do hope that she does perform again, as she is a remarkable live artist. Another album would definitely be incredible. I really love Nelly Furtado and wanted to celebrate her here. From 2024’s incredible 7, back to an album that is among my favourites 2000’s Woah, Nelly!, to 2006’s Loose. Promiscuous, its most-noted single, turns twenty in April. An artist always changing and releasing this stunning music, when it comes to Nelly Furtado, there are few…
AS phenomenal as her.
