Nelly Furtado
Nelly Kim Furtado ComIH (/fərˈtɑːdoʊ/ fər-TAH-doh; Portuguese: [fuɾˈtaðu]; born December 2, 1978) is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She has sold over 45 million records, including 35 million in album sales worldwide,[6] making her one of the most successful Canadian artists. Critics have noted Furtado's musical versatility and experimentation with genres.[7][8][9][10]
Nelly Furtado
- Singer
- songwriter
- actress
1996–present
3
- DreamWorks
- Geffen
- Mosley
- Nelstar (current)
- Universal Music Latin
- Interscope
Furtado first gained fame with her trip hop-inspired debut album, Whoa, Nelly! (2000), which was a critical and commercial success that spawned two top-10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, "I'm Like a Bird" and "Turn Off the Light". The former won her a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Furtado's introspective folk-heavy 2003 second album, Folklore, explored her Portuguese roots. Its singles received moderate success in Europe, but the album's underperformance compared to her debut was regarded as a sophomore slump.
Furtado's third album, Loose (2006), was a smash hit and became her bestselling album, with more than 10 million copies sold worldwide, also making it one of the bestselling albums of the 2000s.[11][12] Considered a radical image reinvention, the album spawned four successful number-one singles worldwide: "Promiscuous" (featuring Timbaland), "Maneater", "Say It Right", and "All Good Things (Come to an End)". Her 2007 feature on Timbaland's "Give It to Me" in the same era also topped the charts in the US and overseas. Furtado's critically acclaimed duet with James Morrison, "Broken Strings", also topped the charts in Europe in 2008.[13]
She released her first Spanish-language album, Mi Plan, in 2009, which won her a Latin Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Album. In 2012, Furtado released her nostalgia-inspired fifth album The Spirit Indestructible. Furtado split with her management and went independent thereafter, releasing her indie-pop sixth album, The Ride, in 2017 under her own label Nelstar Entertainment.
She has won many awards throughout her career, including one Grammy Award from seven nominations, one Latin Grammy Award, ten Juno Awards, one BRIT Award, one Billboard Music Award, one MTV Europe Music Award, one World Music Award, and three Much Music Video Awards. Furtado has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame, and was awarded Commander of the Order of Prince Henry on February 28, 2014, by Aníbal Cavaco Silva, the then-President of Portugal.[14][15][16]
Early life
Furtado was born on December 2, 1978, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Her Portuguese parents, António José Furtado and Maria Manuela Furtado, were born on São Miguel Island in the Azores[17] and had immigrated to Canada in the late 1960s.[18] Nelly was named after Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim.[19] Her elder siblings are Michael Anthony and Lisa Anne. They were raised Roman Catholic.[19][20] At age four, she began performing and singing in Portuguese.[17][21] Furtado's first public performance was when she sang a duet with her mother at a church on Portugal Day. She began playing musical 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,[19] and as a teenager, she performed in a Portuguese marching band.[18] Furtado has acknowledged her family as the source of her strong work ethic; she spent eight summers working as a chambermaid with her mother, along with her brother and sister, who was a housekeeper in Victoria.[22]
Career
1996–1999: Career beginnings
After graduating from Mount Douglas Secondary School in 1996, she moved to Toronto to reside with her sister. There, she got a full-time job at an alarm company.[23] Later, she would meet Tallis Newkirk, member of the hip hop group Plains of Fascination.[23] She contributed vocals to their 1996 album, Join the Ranks, on the track "Waitin' 4 the Streets".[24] 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.[24] She left the group and planned to move back home.
In 1997, she performed at the Honey Jam talent show.[24][25] Her performance attracted the attention of The Philosopher Kings singer Gerald Eaton, 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 was shopped to record companies by her attorney Chris Taylor and led to her 1999 record deal with DreamWorks Records, signed by A&R executive Beth Halper, partner of Garbage drummer and record producer Butch Vig.[26] Furtado's first single, "Party's Just Begun (Again)", was released that year on the soundtrack album for Brokedown Palace (1999).
2000–2005: Whoa, Nelly! and Folklore
Furtado continued the collaboration with Eaton and West, who co-produced her debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, which was released in October 2000. 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".[27] 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".[28] According to Maclean's magazine, Whoa, Nelly! had sold six million copies worldwide as of August 2006.[29] Portions of the song "Scared of You" are in Portuguese, while "Onde Estás" is entirely in Portuguese, reflecting Furtado's Portuguese heritage.[18] Following the release of the album, Furtado headlined the "Burn in the Spotlight Tour" and also appeared on Moby's Area:One tour.
In 2002, Furtado appeared on the song "Thin Line", on underground hip hop group Jurassic 5's album Power in Numbers.[30] The same year, Furtado provided her vocals to the Paul Oakenfold song "The Harder They Come" from the album Bunkka. She also had a collaboration with Colombian artist Juanes in the song "Fotografía" (Photograph), where she showed her diversity of yet another language, Spanish. Furtado was also featured in "Breath" from Swollen Members' Monsters in the Closet release; the video for "Breath", directed by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, won the 2003 Western Canadian Music Awards Outstanding Video and MuchVIBE Best Rap Video. In 2002, Furtado was the recipient of an International Achievement Award at the SOCAN Awards in Toronto for her song "I'm Like a Bird".[31]
Furtado's second album, Folklore, was released in November 2003. One of the tracks on the album, "Childhood Dreams", was dedicated to her daughter, Nevis. The album includes the single "Força", the official anthem of the UEFA Euro 2004. Furtado performed the song in Lisbon in the final of the tournament, in which Portugal's national team played.[32] The lead single released was "Powerless (Say What You Want)" and the second single was the ballad "Try". The album was not as successful as her debut, partly due to the album's less "poppy" sound,[33] as well as underpromotion from her label DreamWorks Records. DreamWorks had just been sold to Universal Music Group at the time of the album's release. Eventually in 2005, DreamWorks Records, along with many of its artists, including Furtado, were absorbed into Geffen Records. "Powerless (Say What You Want)" was later remixed into a Spanish version called "Abre Tu Corazón", featuring Juanes, who had previously worked with Furtado on his track "Fotografía". The two would collaborate again on "Te Busqué" (I Searched for You), a single from Furtado's 2006 album Loose.[34] In 2003, Furtado won an International Achievement Award at the SOCAN Awards in Toronto for her song "Turn Off the Light".[31]
Other ventures
Furtado has appeared on the cover of numerous international lifestyle and fashion magazines, including Canada's Flare and Elle; Russia's Elle Girl; Hungary's Shape; Portugal's Vogue; Germany's Maxim; and US' Teen People, Vanidades and YM. She has appeared on the cover of several international editions of Cosmopolitan (Turkey, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Serbia and Hungary).[108] She was voted one of the "Fun and Fearless Females" by Cosmopolitan in 2002. In October 2023, Furtado appeared in Kim Kardashian's shapewear brand Skims' campaign alongside other celebrities, including Kim Cattrall, Lana Condor, Coco Jones and Hari Nef.[109][110]
Personal life
In September 2003, Furtado gave birth to a daughter with her then boyfriend Jasper Gahunia.[111][112] They dated for several years and were friends prior. The couple broke up in 2005, though according to Furtado in a 2006 interview, remain friends and share joint responsibility of raising their daughter.[113] On July 19, 2008, Furtado married sound engineer Demacio Castellon, with whom she had worked on Loose.[114] In April 2017, during an appearance on the British daytime panel show Loose Women, Furtado announced she had separated from Castellon during the summer of 2016 and said she is now single.[115][116] In December 2021, Furtado revealed on her Instagram account that she has two more children,[117][112] the oldest being a girl and the youngest being a boy, as she revealed in July 2023 during an interview with Vogue where she also revealed she is single again.[96]
In a June 2006 interview with Genre magazine, when asked if she had "ever felt an attraction to women", Furtado replied, "Absolutely. Women are beautiful and sexy".[118] Some considered this an announcement of bisexuality,[119] but, in August 2006, she stated that she was "straight, but very open-minded".[120]
In November 2006, Furtado revealed that she once turned down US$500,000 to pose fully clothed in Playboy.[121] Furtado can speak fifty to sixty percent of the Spanish language.[122]
As of March 2017, Furtado has stated that she resides in Toronto and New York City.[123] In an April 2017 interview with DIY magazine, Furtado revealed she had purchased an apartment in New York City.[124]
In May 2023, during an interview with Fault magazine, Furtado revealed she had recently been diagnosed with ADHD.[95]
Artistry
Furtado possesses a mezzo-soprano voice.[127][128] Kristie Rohwedder of Bustle Magazine characterizes it as "soaring"[127] while Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine calls it "nasally".[128] During her childhood and youth, Furtado embraced many musical genres, listening heavily to mainstream rock, 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.[19][129] Her biggest influence when growing up was Ani DiFranco; she explained that "[w]hen I was a teenager, I wanted to be Ani DiFranco. I never wanted to be part of corporate music."[130] She cites diverse influences, including Madonna, Mariah Carey,[131] Blondie, Prince, The Police, Eurythmics, Talking Heads, De La Soul, TLC, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Amália Rodrigues, Caetano Veloso, Juanes, Jeff Buckley, Esthero, Björk, Cornershop, Oasis, Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins, U2 and Beck.[19][26][132]
Furtado's work has also inspired the likes of Lorde,[133] Slayyyter,[134] Dua Lipa,[135][136] Bridgit Mendler[137] and Gia Woods.[138]
Headlining
Co-headlining
Opening act
