Nelly Kim Furtado (born December 2, 1978) is a
Portuguese-Canadian singer-songwriter,
record producer, and
actress.
She has sold over 18 million albums
worldwide, and currently resides in Toronto
.
Furtado
grew up in Victoria
, British
Columbia
, Canada
.
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," "
All Good Things " and
"
Say It Right."
In 2009, Furtado released her first full-length Spanish album
"
Mi Plan", Which contains her first solo
number 1 on the
Billboard
Hot Latin Tracks, "
Manos al Aire", staying on the Top position
for 4 consecutive weeks.
Furtado is known for experimenting with different instruments,
sounds, genres, vocal styles, and languages. This diversity has
been influenced by her wide-ranging musical taste and her interest
in different cultures.
Early life
Furtado
was born December 2, 1978, in the Canadian city of Victoria, British
Columbia to
Portuguese parents, Maria Manuela and António José Furtado, both
immigrants from Portugal Azores
archipelago. Her parents were born on São Miguel
Island
and immigrated to Canada in the late 1960s.
Furtado has a strong connection with Portuguese culture. At age
four she began performing and singing in
Portuguese.
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
keyboards. At the age of 12, 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.
Musical career
Early career
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 Plains of Fascination. 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, where she was signed by A&R executive Beth Halper,
partner of
Garbage drummer and record
producer
Butch Vig. Furtado's first
single, "
Party's Just
Begun ", 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!, which was 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 ". It received four
Grammy
Award 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".
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". According to
Maclean's magazine,
Whoa,
Nelly! had sold five million copies worldwide as of August
2006.
Portions of the song "Scared of You" are in Portuguese, while "Onde
Estás" is entirely in Portuguese, reflecting Furtado's Portuguese
heritage. The International Release of "Whoa Nelly" featured fellow
Canadian
Esthero on the song titled "I Feel
You".
In 2002, Furtado appeared on the song "
Thin Line", on
underground hip hop group
Jurassic 5's album
Power in Numbers. The same year,
Furtado provided her vocals to the Paul Oakenfold's song "
The
Harder They Come" from the album "
Bunkka" and also
made the song "These words are my own". She also had a
collaboration with Colombian artist
Juanes,
in the song "Fotografia" where she showed her diversity of yet
another language.
2003–2005: Folklore
Furtado's second album,
Folklore, was released
in November 2003. The final track on the album, "Childhood Dreams",
was dedicated to her daughter, Nevis. 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. The lead single is "
Powerless " and the second
single is the ballad "
Try".
The album was not as successful as her debut, partly due to the
album's less "poppy" sound, as well as underpromotion from her
label DreamWorks Records. DreamWorks had just been sold to
Universal Music Group. In 2005,
DreamWorks Records, along with many of its artists including
Furtado, was absorbed into
Geffen
Records.
"Powerless (Say What You Want)" was later remixed, featuring
Colombian rocker
Juanes, who had previously
worked with Furtado on his track "
Fotografía" ("Photograph"). The two would
collaborate again on "
Te Busqué" ("I
searched for you"), a single from Furtado's 2006 album Loose.
2006–2008: Loose
Furtado's third album,
Loose, was released in June
2006. She named it after the spontaneous, creative decisions she
made while creating the album. Some have labeled her a
"sellout" for seemingly abandoning
her folk and rock roots in favour of hip hop and R&B, while
others have accused her of attempting to "sex up" her music and
appearance to sell more records. In this album, primarily produced
by
Timbaland, Furtado experiments with
sounds from R&B, hip hop, and 1980s music. Furtado herself
describes 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. 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".
Loose has become the most successful album of Furtado's
career so far, as it reached number one not only in Canada and the
United States, but also several countries worldwide.
The album produced her
first number-one hit in the United States
, "Promiscuous",
as well as her first number-one hit in the United Kingdom
, "Maneater". The single
"
Say It Right" eventually became
Furtado's most successful song worldwide, due to its huge success
in Europe and in the United States, where it became her second
number-one hit. "
All
Good Things " became her most successful song in Europe,
topping single charts in numerous countries there.
On February 16, 2007, Furtado embarked on the "Get Loose Tour". She
returned in March 2007 to her hometown of Victoria to perform a
concert at the Save-On Foods Memorial Centre. In honour of her
visit, local leaders officially proclaimed March 21, 2007, the
first day of spring, as Nelly Furtado Day. After the tour, she
released her first live
DVD/
CD
named
Loose the Concert.
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.
She also
appeared on stage at the Concert for
Diana at Wembley
Stadium
in London
on July 1,
2007, where she performed "Say It
Right", "Maneater", and "I'm like a Bird".
In 2007, Furtado and
Justin
Timberlake were featured on
Timbaland's single "
Give
It to Me", which became her third number-one single in the U.S.
and second in the UK. In late 2008, Furtado collaborated with
James Morrison on a song
called "
Broken Strings" for his album
"
Songs for You, Truths for
Me". The single was released on December 8 and peaked at #2 on
the
UK Singles Chart in early
January.
In 2007, Furtado leaked plans to
Flare regarding a song she was set to
duet for
Kylie Minogue's return.
However, the song was not featured on her album
X but Minogue says the
aforementioned song "is still outstanding" and has plans to pursue
it. She said "I am looking forward to getting in the studio and
doing it because I know Nelly and I would have a great time
together".
2009–present: Mi Plan and fifth Studio album
On December 31, 2008,
El Diario
La Prensa posted an article that Furtado is planning on
recording songs in English and Spanish for her upcoming album and
that it is "expected to launch on September 15, 2009".
Furtado made a guest appearance on
Flo
Rida's new album,
R.O.O.T.S., which was released on March 31,
2009. The track is titled "
Jump". Furtado has also made a guest
appearance on
Divine Brown's
Love Chronicles, co-writing and
singing on the background of the song "Sunglasses".
In early March, a song called "Gotta Know" leaked onto the Internet
and was said to be Nelly's. As response, on March 4, 2009, Furtado
stated on her MySpace blog that the song is not hers and that she
is recording two new albums: one in Spanish, and the other in
Portuguese. Nelly Furtado announced via the
Perez Hilton blog, that the Spanish album would
be titled
Mi Plan and the first
single titled "
Manos Al Aire" (in
Spanish, meaning "Hands in the Air").The album will have twelve new
songs, all in Spanish, as stated by Nelly in a message left in her
official websiteThe second single "
Más" was released on July 21,
as it was announced on Nelly's official myspace. The third single
"Mi Plan" (ft.
Alex Cuba) was released on
iTunes on August 11, 2009 and "Bajo Otra Luz" (ft.
Julieta Venegas and
La Mala Rodriguez) is the fourth and final
countdown single and it was released on September 1, 2009. She also
invited the Mexican star
Alejandro
Fernandez to sing a duet song named "Sueños" ("Dreams").The
videoclip for "Manos Al Aire" premiered on July 29 on
It's On with Alexa Chung.
She made a guest appearance on Canadian singer
k-os's new album
Yes!, collaborating alongside
Saukrates on the song "I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman," released in
early July 2009. Nelly Furtado will make a guest appearance on
Tiësto's single "Who Wants To Be Alone"
on his new album
Kaleidoscope which was
released on October 6, 2009.
Nelly was also invited to record "Manos Al Aire" in Simlish for the
new
Sims 3 expansion, World Adventures
In a recent video, Nelly said "I’m also writing an English album,"
she says "Timbaland and I hooked up in the studio about three
months ago and we wrote 20 songs in two days. It was really
inspired. I think maybe some of that material will be on my English
album."
Record label
She has
formed her own record label, Nelstar, in conjunction with Canadian
independent label group Last Gang Labels.
The first act signed to Nelstar is Fritz Helder & the Phantoms.
Furtado released her first Spanish single '
Manos Al Aire' on the new label.
Music influences
During her pre-teenage to teenage years, Furtado embraced many
musical genres, listening heavily to mainstream
R&B,
hip
hop,
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,
Portishead,
Janet
Jackson,
Oasis,
Caetano Veloso,
Esthero,
Amalia
Rodrigues,
Björk,
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,
Cornershop,
TLC,
Mariah Carey,
Mary J. Blige,
Digable Planets,
De La Soul,
Radiohead,
Kylie Minogue,
Madonna,
Shakira,
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.
Personal life
On September 20, 2003, in Toronto, Furtado gave birth to a
daughter, Nevis, whose father is Jasper Gahunia [AKA DJ Lil' Jazz,
Canadian DMC Champion 1998]. 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.
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". Some considered this an announcement
of
bisexuality, but in August 2006, she
stated that she was "straight, but very open-minded". In November
2006, Furtado revealed that she once turned down
US$ 500,000 to pose fully-clothed in
Playboy. People Magazine said that
she was Miley Cyrus's cousin and had feelings for Billy Ray Cyrus
but she had said it was all false.
In July 2007 it was reported that Furtado was engaged to Cuban
sound engineer Demacio "Demo" Castellón. He worked with her on
Loose. On October 17, 2008, it was reported in
People Magazine that
Furtado and Castellón have been married since July 19, 2008.
Furtado confirmed to
Entertainment Tonight that she
married Castellón on July 19, 2008.
Furtado Is Promoting a new line of Henna Tattoos In 2009.
Philanthropy
For World
AIDS Day in 2006, Furtado, Enrique
Iglesias, Kanye West, Kelly Rowland, Snoop
Dogg and Kelly Clarkson teamed up
with MTV, BET, and Nike
to perform at an AIDS awareness concert in South
Africa. Furtado also hosted a program about AIDS on
MTV, which also featured celebrity guests
Alicia Keys and
Justin Timberlake.
Nelly also donated money to save the
Sooke Potholes in her hometown Victoria,
B.C.
Discography
- Studio albums
- Other albums
- DVDs
Number-one singles
- *Received a digital download only release
Filmography
Awards
References
External links
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