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Nelly Furtado played her first real shows affer signing a record deal last year at the tender age of 20. “I did four Lilith Fair dates, and for the encore, everyone who performed that day would get onstage and sing [Bob Dylan's] ‘I Shall Be Released.’ I was singing with Chrissie Hynde and Sarah Mclachlan and Beth Orton,” she says, still incredulous. “It was like a dream. I just kept thinking, ‘What am I doing here with all these seasoned pros?’”

It’s a reasonable question for an untested artist who grew up in remote Victoria, British Columbia, a first-generation Canadian, the daughter of workingclass Portuguese parents. Furtado has indeed taken only the first few steps along her path, but her wide-ranging taste suggests an artist who has sampled much that music has to offer. Further evidence of her eclecticism is found in the instruments she plays (guitar, ukulele, trombone), the languages in which she sings (English, Portuguese, Hindi) and the debut album that represents another dream fulfilled. To be sure, Whoa Nelly! (released on DreamWorks Records 24th October 2000) boasts a hybrid sound that is uniquely her own.

The most recent chapter in Furtado’s story began when, at 18, she leapt onstage to sing at a Toronto talent show for mostly black, female performers. It was there that she met her manager, who also represents multiplatinum Canadian act The Philosopher Kings. Shortly thereaffer, the Kings’ Gerald Eaton and Brian West produced a demo for Furtado. The results were adequate, but the well-rounded teenager already had plans to go backpacking in Europe, then head home to study creative writing.

She nonetheless stayed in touch with Eaton and West, who kept insisting she retum to Toronto. Furtado recalls: “I went to see The Philosopher Kings both times they played in Victoria, and both times they said, ‘You gotta come to Toronto and do some more demos.’ I was, like, ‘l don’t know. I’m in school, I want to write, I’m learning to play guitar – blah blah blah.’ Then one day Gerald just called and said, ‘You’re coming to Toronto.’ So I went for two weeks and it was awesome. The three of us totally clicked. Gerald and Brian are amazing – smart and charismatic and wonderful to work with. They created the most positive creative environment you could imagine.

The material they recorded during those sessions ultimately led to Furtado’s deal with DreamWorks Records (where she was signed by A&R exec Beth Halper). Eaton and West (known collectively as Track and Field) came on board as production partners.

Among other things, Whoa Nelly! is a melding of Furtado’s accumulated musical inspiration. The singer-songwriter grew up with plenty of mainstream pop – Abba, Lionel Ritchie, Madonna, Paula Abdul but in her formative years, she became fixated on its urban incarnation. An infatuation with youngsters Kris Kross led to an embrace of early ’90s R&B like New Edition, Bel Biv Devoe, Salt-N-Pepa and Jodeci. Furtado informs: “On my 12th birthday one of my friends bought me a Mariah Carey tape.”

The first tape she bought for herself was by TLC, which foreshadowed her development into a hiphop fan. De La Soul, Ice-T, Digable Planets, P.M. Dawn – these artists consumed Furtado until her senior year of high school, when she started listening to her older brother’s CD collection. There she discovered Radiohead, Oasis, Pulp, Garbage, U2 and The Verve. That summer a friend from London upped the ante by making her a mix tape of music by classic artists like Simon and Garfunkel and modem standard-bearers like Prodigy and Portishead. “I got into The Beatles then, too, and Smashing Pumpkins,” she says. (Furtado’s sponge-like nature can be partially attributed to what she calls her “obsession” with pop culture. “I love it” she says. “I can’t help it – I love awards shows, magazines, movies. I’m totally star-struck”).

This panoply of influences is matched by the music of Furtado’s ancestral homeland. When she was 16, she took a giant step toward securing her own creative voice while on a trip to Portugal, where she uncovered the local equivalent of an MC battle “l went to this club and just got up onstage and started singing, making up lyrics off the top of my head. That’s what hip-hop’s all about – freestyling. The fado tradition in Portugal has a similar thing called cancoes desafios, which is basically spontaneous singing. You try to show up the other person onstage with you – you dis their mother or say they’re lazy or something. There are a lot of colloquialisms involved and you’ve got to know the language of the land pretty well to get it right.”

The realisation of this cultural convergence gave way to another epiphany when Furtado went to London to visit the friend who’d given her that all-important mix tape. “One night, my friend’s dad played a Brazilian compilation CD and I was hooked,” she declares. “It was African and Portuguese music coming together. The emotion and the romanticism comes from the Portuguese side; the rhythm and groove and energy come from the African side.” Someday she wants to make an album of Brazilian music, sung entirely in Portuguese.

And though her love for these sounds may have been foreseen considering her Portuguese heritage and gravitation toward R&B and hip-hop, Furtado’s career in the rarefied world of professional music is something of a surprise. “My mum has always worked in housekeeping at this place called The Robin Hood Motel,” she reports. “My dad does stone masonry and had a small landscaping business. I worked with my mum as a chambermaid every summer for eight years, so I know what it’s like to work for money. I vividly remember getting my first paycheck – I spent it on clothes.”

The origins of Furtado’s work ethic and down-to-earth disposition, then, are clear; the font of her artistic leanings is perhaps more elusive. “It may sound strange,” she says, “but I think my creativity has always been connected to the outdoors, to when I was a kid and I’d go outside and sing.” She elaborates: “My parents are from the Azores, a Portuguese island group in the mid-Atlantic. They have farmland there, about 50 acres, with cows and everything. It’s very beautiful. I think that’s why my parents moved to Vancouver lsland [where Victoria is located], which is also beautiful and similar in other ways as well.”

“My earliest memory is of camping, and then being in a boat,” she reminisces. “I was always on my bike, always in the creek. My friends and I would build forts and play all day. Growing up surrounded by that kind of beauty has a lot to do with how a person feels – it just makes you a certain way. Apparently, it made Furtado creative, and that creativity found its natural outlet in song.

Furtado’s mother, who sang in church, was an early inducement in this direction. “I remember hiding behind the couch and listening to my mother and some other ladies from the church practicing for big festivals like Portugal Day. When I was four years old, I sang a duet with my mother for about 300 people. Even at that age, I knew I loved performing,” Furtado reveals.

Secular music also made its presence known at home. “We had a pretty dope stereo in the living room when I was growing up,” she says, “but there was this other record player in my parents’ bedroom. I’d go in there and sit by myself and listen to that Billy Joel album Glass Houses over and over. The thing that intrigued me the most was the sound of breaking glass on the record. I vaguely remember trying to sample it onto a tape recorder. Unfortunately, I tripped over that record player one day and broke it – the speaker fell off.”

The sound of breaking glass was a bit of an omen as Nelly grew into adolescence. “I was hanging out with the naughty circle in school,” she confides. “These kids’ parents let them stay out all night and sleep over wherever they wanted to. I wasn’t allowed to do those things, but I’d break my curfew all the time and get in trouble. Then I went through my little girl-gang thing; we called ourselves the Portuguese Mafia. We’d crash parties, and if someone pissed us off we would go back and let them know it. But the worst thing we ever did was throw rocks at the windows of school buses parked in abandoned lots.”

Those years were not all vandalism, however. Furtado also played trombone in her school’s marching, jazz and concert bands and recreated Janet Jackson’s video dance routines with friends who shared her love of urban pop. Hearing her discuss this music with obvious knowledge and passion, one might think she grew up in big-city America. But her community had an even more diverse makeup. “I bonded with other first-generation Canadians,” she illuminates. “Their parents were from all over – China, India, Africa, Latin America. I experienced many different cultures, which enriched my musical knowledge.”

This enrichment in tum spurred her evolution as an artist. “Not long ago, I was just making music for music’s sake – I made music with anyone I could, every chance I got,” she says. “But it was very self-involved; it was just for me. My first recording experience came when I was 16, when I sang backup vocals for my friend’s hip-hop group.”

Furtado’s next creative milestone came the following year, when she moved cross-country. “After high-school, I went to Toronto,” she narrates. “I got a job at an alarm company and started working my way into the music scene. I was part of an experimental trip-hop duo called Nelstar. It was me writing melodies and a hip-hop-style producer coming up with the beats. We made lots of tracks and even filmed a video.”

Despite this progress, Furtado recognized a key skill she had yet to master: “At the time, I didn’t feel ready to take the next step with my music, which would have been recording and getting a complete release out,” she says. “I was writing solid melodies and coming up with arrangements, but it really bugged me that I couldn’t write proper songs with a guitar – I knew that was the final frontier. “Actually,” Furtado continues, “I always had this goal to learn guitar. I played ukulele at school, so I knew those four strings – two more couldn’t be that much harder, right? And I already knew the strumming action. But it takes a while before you get your own identity on guitar; when you start, your songs sound pretty straight-up folk.”

Still, playing this traditional instrument did not discourage Furtado’s interest in progressive music. “I’m attracted to the roots of anything fresh and cutting-edge,” she confirms. Her enduring absorption of other artists’ work reflected this penchant. “I love Jeff Buckley,” she says. “Grace – that changed my life. He totally influenced my singing and songwriting and performing, everything.” She also began to soak up the music of intemational artists like Amalia Rodrigues and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Of course, all of this was brought to bear on Whoa Nelly!, but it was the artists who traversed cultures that left the deepest impression on Furtado’s debut.

“I made this record because I was inspired by Cornershop’s When I Was Born For The Seventh Time,” she states. “It was pop music, but it was a mixture of pop and lndian music, which I found totally exciting. [Beck's] Odelay had a similar effect on me. It was supercreative, wonderful-sounding, full of integrity – and not melancholy. Sometimes it seemed that everything I liked was sad, so hearing that was very meaningful for me. Those two records made me realise I wanted to make a pop album, something with the edge of the Portuguese and Brazilian music I love, but also something happy. I liked the challenge of making heartfelt, emotional music that’s upbeat and hopeful – like Cornershop and Beck and Bob Marley have been able to do.

Furtado extends this philosophy to her live show. “I don’t want to be on the road every night dwelling on the negative stuff and getting depressed over it,” she says. “I’ve gone to see some of my favourite bands, like Radiohead, and was, like, how can they do this every night? How can they torture themselves like this? That’s why Beck’s show was such a big deal. He made me feel like I can groove every night, like I can party onstage. Some of the music I write can put me in a difficult emotional space and I need to balance that. I want to spread the love; I don’t want people to cry affer my show – unless they’re tears of joy.

Furtado is eager to put this commitment into practice. “I can’t wait to get on the road,” she says. “That’s what I’ve been waiting to do my whole life, you know? It’s always been my dream to have my own band. I’ve always imagined siting on the bus, reading for hours until we get to the next city. That might seem weird to some people, but I’ve always been a nomad at heart; I love to wander.

Furtado’s focus on a future of such dreams-come-true does not prohibit her from living in the moment. She particulariy savoured her time in the studio. “I could feel how special that was the whole time we were doing it,” she affirms. “I know I’m going to look back on it with very sentimental feelings. Toward the end, when we’d be sitting around sipping Coronas, I began to feel sad. I’d been making music with Gerald and Brian for a year and a half and it was almost over. It was a little like the end of high school – we needed some yearbooks to sign.” But Nelly understands that there are other musical avenues yet to explore. “I’m ready to move on,” she says. “I want to grow and develop. I’m just gonna keep on writing and see where it takes me.”

Point Magazine

By Lyndsey Parker, Launch.com

Canadian-based, Portuguese-born singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado may be young–only 21–but her debut album, Whoa Nelly, sounds like the work of a seasoned pro. This shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise, since Nelly has been writing songs since she was 12 years old, plays various instruments (guitar, keyboards, ukulele, trombone), sings in several languages (English, Portuguese, Hindi), and has multiple diverse influences (everyone from Mary J. Blige to Jeff Buckley to Caetano Veloso). Judging from her answers during her October 25 LAUNCH online chat, Nelly, a former creative writing student, is wise beyond her years as well. Whether she was giving advice to aspiring musicians, discussing her Portuguese ancestry, contemplating the current state of top 40 radio, or reflecting on the heady experience of overnight success, her responses were always thoughtful, interesting, and from the heart. Here’s what she had to say:

launch_nelly_furtado: Hey everybody, thanks for coming to my chat. I’m excited. Let’s get started.

babygirl1971_99: How old were you when you first started performing?

launch_nelly_furtado: I was 4 years old the first time I sang–I did a duet with my mom on Portugal Day in church.

mel_baby_girl4: Are you happy that your music is being played on top 40 radio or where you hoping to attract a different type of audience?

launch_nelly_furtado: I feel that my record addresses all types of different audiences, because it’s so diverse. Right now the song being played on top 40 is “I’m Like A Bird.” But I also have another single out called “Party,” which is being spun at clubs. There’s a vinyl edition out right now, and it may be getting spun at college radio. I’m glad the record is going to mean a lot of different things to different people.

Sonyfish: You did great on the tonight show, will you be doing David, Rosie, and other shows?

launch_nelly_furtado: Thank you. Yes, I will be doing David Letterman on December 13, and we might be doing Saturday Night Live in January or February.

mel_baby_girl4: What is the song “Hey Man” about?

launch_nelly_furtado: “Hey Man” is the oldest song on the album; I wrote it three years ago. At the time, I was taking creative writing courses at college and I had just bought a guitar. I wrote that in my room in Victoria, B.C. I think the song is capturing a moment…I can’t quite explain it.

mel_baby_girl4: What is the song “… on the radio” about?

launch_nelly_furtado: Let’s return to that later.

Sonyfish: When you tour again, will you do clubs again or go for stadiums?

launch_nelly_furtado: Well, it depends on how well the record is doing (laughs). Right now, my next show is in Lisbon, Portugal. I believe it’s November 23. Then I have a bunch of Christmas radio shows in December. Then a show in England in January and a REAL U.S. tour in January/February. It will probably not be stadiums, though one day they would be fun to try.

safari_cutie: tell nelly its ashley her friend (little ashley) and ask her if she well ever do a tour in vancouver

launch_nelly_furtado: Hi Ashley! How are you? Thanks for keeping up to date on all the Nelly news. Say hi to your family for me. I am hoping to play Victoria or Vancouver in December, because we have a radio show in Seattle, so we hope to swing by there.

fatbra89: Did you want to be something else other than a singer?

launch_nelly_furtado: Well, my second passion is creative writing, which I studied at school. I would maybe like to return to university one day. I like to follow my heart; there’s all different kinds of ways I like to express myself. Basically, with all my decisions, I have used my gut instinct, so I am going to see what comes up and make my decisions accordingly. I only like to do things I really care about.

LyndseyLaunch: How old are you and what is your sign?

launch_nelly_furtado: 21. I’m a Sagittarius, turning 22 on December 2.

ropich: Do you still play trombone?

launch_nelly_furtado: No, I haven’t played in about three years. I would like to start again–I miss it a little bit–but I think it’s helped me with my singing, such as in “Baby Girl”–pada pada ching!

mel_baby_girl4: What did you do on the day of your cd release?

launch_nelly_furtado: You’ll be very disappointed in me. I actually celebrated a few nights earlier on the Jay Leno show, Friday and Saturday night, because some friends were visiting from Vancouver and my band was in L.A., so we watched the show and celebrated. Tuesday I just chilled out by myself and sang on two radio shows in San Jose and San Francisco. Then I bought my album for $8.99–what a deal–at Virgin Mega. One lady recognized me and she bought my CD.

lovegrowsdeeper: Hey Nelly, w’sup? How important is success in the industry to you?

launch_nelly_furtado: I don’t know. Success to me has already happened to an extent, because I already have fans that understand what I’m about and appreciate my music. Even with all the acclaim I’m getting from the press, it’s the connection with the fans that I feel at my shows and reading my e-groups and website that really touches me and makes me feel successful, because that’s the thing that’s real.

killabigthrilla: so where are you from originally?

launch_nelly_furtado: I was born in Victoria, B.C., Canada. My parents were born in the Azores Islands, specifically from Sao Miguel. They are a group of nine islands 900 miles off the coast of Portugal, so that makes me first-generation Canadian. Yet I have lived in Toronto for the past three years. I speak English and Portuguese, and a tiny bit of Spanish, too.

mista1313: ARE YOU COMING OUT WITH A FULL LENGTH PORTUGUESE ALBUM

launch_nelly_furtado: I would love to come out with one. I promise that I will come out with one in the next five years. That’s really important to me; I have a project in mind. There’s a lot of things I didn’t touch on in Whoa Nelly, even though it sounds pretty international. I want to delve even further into my Portuguese history and use other influences, such as folkloric songs and famous church melodies, and maybe incorporate some other cultural styles, such as Indian and Brazilian. When I sing in Portuguese, I feel in my element, and an important part of my personality, as a singer, is the Portuguese-singer side of me.

safari_cutie: are u ever going to sing in ur home town and VICTORIA MISSES YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

launch_nelly_furtado: Hopefully, I will back in December, it’s not confirmed yet. I miss Victoria, too.

mel_baby_girl4: What is your favourite song on the album?

launch_nelly_furtado: My favorite song is “Sh-t On The Radio.” To me, it describes my entire album Whoa Nelly. It kind of addresses what I was feeling when I was making the record. I think that because I’ve been making music for so long for my own interests, that when the opportunity came around to record a pop record with a major label, I was faced with all sorts of fears. Then I realized the songs I was writing were coming from me, and there was nothing wrong with them, and I shouldn’t be afraid to express myself. I think it addresses in a way about having my song played on top 40 radio. I’m making pop music, but I don’t have to fit under the pop umbrella. I don’t have to fit under one category, as I did when I was a trip-hop artist. Now I’m a Nelly artist.

babygirl1971_99: If you were a cartoon character whom would you be?

launch_nelly_furtado: Betty Boop or something, or the Road Runner. Or Garfield, cause I’ve always wanted to be a cat and sleep and eat all day.

clints_teddy_bear: Hi Nelly My Question is Do You Have A Bf

launch_nelly_furtado: No, currently single. (laughs)

mel_baby_girl4: Who are your musical influences?

launch_nelly_furtado: They range so much. The first type of music that I was totally infatuated with was hip-hop and R&B. I would listen to everything from Bel Biv DeVoe to Salt N’ Pepa to Mary J. Blige, Ice-T, and LL Cool J. Then I discovered rock influences like Radiohead, the Verve, Oasis, and Smashing Pumpkins. Jeff Buckley has been one of my biggest influences. More recently, a big influence has been Caetano Veloso, a Brazilian artist. And I was just listening to Ani DiFranco on the plane, the Not A Pretty Girl CD.

lovegrowsdeeper: how’s it feel to hear your own s… on the radio? (and clubs?)

launch_nelly_furtado: The first time I heard “I’m Like A Bird” on the radio was in Toronto, and I had to get up really early in the morning so I was in a bad mood. Then I heard my song and it obviously cheered me up. Last week in L.A., KROQ played “Sh-t On The Radio.” I was driving in the car and it sounded great. I was happy for the rest of the day.

puppypawzzzzz: Do you play any instruments?I play piccollo

launch_nelly_furtado: In the past I played ukulele and trombone. Currently, I mainly play guitar, but I play keyboards in the studio and I like to program bass lines and stuff in the studio.

LyndseyLaunch: what would you say has shaped your life most?

launch_nelly_furtado: Probably just my Portuguese identity and going back to the Azores as a child, experiencing the culture, learning the language. I think it’s made me proud, open-minded. Also coming from a working-class background shaped my identity in a huge, positive way.

puppypawzzzzz: Are you ever going to have fans in one of your videos?

launch_nelly_furtado: Well, I really liked Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff” with all their fans, and so I think it looks like a good idea. I might just have to do that. Maybe an exclusive concert or something and tape it.

ricardoferreira2000: Hey Nelly! You coming to Karen and Oscars this weekend? They r having a Halloween party. And how r u?

launch_nelly_furtado: I wish I was. Karen always manages to have way more fun Halloweens than I do. I’ll probably wind up packing or something. I always have boring Halloweens, except for the time we all dressed up like black cats and went around in the red van.

Sonyfish: Someone just asked me if I’d started a fan club for you… do you know for sure if someone working for you DID start one? If they didn’t please let me know.

launch_nelly_furtado: There’s an address on my CD that is my manager’s P.O. Box where you can send fanmail. There is nothing official, really. Please leave messages, I read them.

killabigthrilla: Hey, would you date a fan?

launch_nelly_furtado: Electric or paper? (laughs out loud)

lovegrowsdeeper: You’re album was already circulating in MP3 before the release date? How do you feel about that?

launch_nelly_furtado: I don’t think my whole album is on Napster yet, but if it is, it’s beyond my control. I think Napster is positive and negative at the same time. It’s great that people can share music online. I think it’s good for music, because artists that would go unheard-of can have an audience online. On the other hand, a CD is a pretty good deal, I’d say. My CD is only $8.99 at Virgin Records!

Sonyfish: Have you had any extremely memorable experiences while touring?

launch_nelly_furtado: I think just getting on the tour bus for the first time, because it had been a dream all my life. Getting on a bus, with a book, travelling to the next place. Meeting fans has been great, too.

lovegrowsdeeper: is nelly short for noella?

launch_nelly_furtado: No, just Nelly. Nelly Kim Furtado. I was named after a gymnast.

safari_cutie: Nelly, have ur parents seen u do a live performance ?

launch_nelly_furtado: My parents have only seen me on TV, doing Leno and Mike Bullard (Canadian TV host).

michelfr_2000: I understand that you became *very* famous in a *very* short time… How are you dealing with it, and what’s the one thing about being famous you had NOT foreseen?

launch_nelly_furtado: That’s why I want to come to Vancouver and play a show. They loved what they’ve seen so far, especially my video, which is getting spins on Much Music. I’m not famous yet, kid. (laughs out loud) I hear that once my video gets on heavy rotation, that’s when the real weirdness will start. I guess I have to wait and see.

killabigthrilla: If you could see a concert, standing in the front row, who would you choose to see?

launch_nelly_furtado: It would be Amalia Rodrigues, Jeff Buckley, or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

pacheco_nelson: to prove this Nelly what was the other name for the red van???

launch_nelly_furtado: The Dodge Caravan–the Portuguese Mafia Mobile. I hope I didn’t get it wrong.

killabigthrilla: Whats your advice t someone who wants to get into the business too?

launch_nelly_furtado: My advice is to realize that every opportunity that comes your way is coming for a reason, because you never know what could come from them, so don’t fear opportunity. Also, make music that you love, that comes from your heart. If you make music you love, other people are bound to like it, too. Constantly seek out other musical people, because you will learn something from every musical experience.

angelbeautybabe: If you would organize a tour like lilith fair who would you invite

launch_nelly_furtado: Jill Scott, Kinney Starr, Esthero, Dido, Ani DiFranco, Mary J. Blige, Marisa Monte, Caetano Veloso, Beck, Cornershop, Incubus…and the list goes on and on.

Blunt_48: Hey Nelly! My favorite cut off the album is the song *On the radio*. I was just wondering what yours is?!?!?!

launch_nelly_furtado: It is mine too, but I also like “Party.”

star287: What do you think of such pop artists as Britney Spears?

launch_nelly_furtado: Wait! I would also put Asian Dub Foundation on the tour, and Beth Orton, Elliott Smith, the Verve, and the New Deal. As for Britney, I don’t know. I guess there’s an audience for every artist out there.

SweetLaoAngel: Do you write your own music?

launch_nelly_furtado: I do, I write all my songs, and I co-produced the record. I have been writing songs since I was 12 and recording since I was 16. I have lots of unreleased material. As much as I can have at the age of 21…heh heh.

mel_baby_girl4: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

launch_nelly_furtado: I will either be making a record or touring. I guarantee that at least my second record will be out. (laughs) I have plans for album number two, musically. I do love Whoa Nelly, and I hope you like it, too.

lovegrowsdeeper: Are the songs you write about ACTUAL personal experiences? or just feelings and ideas?

launch_nelly_furtado: A lot of the songs are about personal experiences, but a lot are feelings, too. I don’t think I ever write narratively, except for “Trying To Find A Way,” but that’s like a Beat poet song. I like to flow.

star287: What’s your biggest career goal and how do you plan to achieve it?

launch_nelly_furtado: One of my biggest goals is to have a stage show that really represents what I’m about, completely. I want to really dream up something surreal, beautiful, and exciting in the immediate future.

ropich: Any songs that you would you like to cover?

launch_nelly_furtado: There’s a song by Prince called “Power Fantastic.” I would love to know from fans what they would like to hear covered at shows. I am looking for something from early-’90s R&B world. Hip-hop. Something unpredictable. Put it on the website message board at www.whoanelly.com or www.nellyfurtado.com. I am really excited that now the record is in stores and that people who buy it will tell a friend. Even if radio or video doesn’t go as I want it to, I hope word of mouth will spread. Thanks for coming to the chat and making me smile. You guys are THA BOMB. I’m a lucky girl.

Even with a U.S. record deal and media hype galore, singer Furtado’s keeping cool

You may not have heard of Nelly Furtado yet.

But you will.

The hype preceding the release Tuesday of the adventurous pop singer’s debut album, the aptly titled Whoa, Nelly!, is about as big as it could possibly get. And it’s been building for months.

Vanity Fair featured the Toronto-based artist — whose unique, free-spirited sound incorporates pop, trip-hop, bossa nova, soul, R&B, hip-hop and folk — back in June.

SPIN, Elle, Interview, Glamour and Elm Street followed with similarly glowing features, and Furtado, 21, was scheduled to appear on Jay Leno this past Friday.

Rolling Stone just reviewed Whoa, Nelly!, giving it 3 1/2 stars out of five and describing it as “wild-ass pop go-go.”

Entertainment Weekly went one step further, delivering an “A” rating and pointing out the album’s “sassy, jittery, let’s-try-that energy.”

Much like the girl herself.

Seated in the lounge at the Phoenix two weeks ago, before an opening set for Jacksoul, Furtado doesn’t seem worried about living up to the huge hype directed her way.

“The cool thing is that a lot of the people who have been generating or creating the hype are people who have already heard the record or seen my show,” said Furtado, a high-strung, eloquent and stylish ball of energy.

“It’s nothing pre-fabricated; it’s really organic. It’s not an artificial interest or love or persuasion of any kind. It’s coming from the ground up, which is nice.”

Furtado’s good looks — her olive skin and intense blue eyes are the product of her Portuguese background — haven’t hurt her cause either. The family music gene runs as far back as her great-grandfather.

Fortunately, she’s as sweet-sounding as she is striking.

“It’s nice to get press,” she shrugs. “And I guess it makes it easier for certain press, for a fashion magazine, to feature an artist who maybe looks more like the people in their magazine than not. I have to admit that it’s probably true.”

Not that Furtado is being styled. She has her own deliberate way of dressing and presenting herself. On this day, her long brown hair is tied back and she’s wearing a form-fitting denim dress — by Toronto design company Snug — and bright red boots from Portugal.

“That’s the cool thing. I’m very picky that way. I bring my own clothes.”

Furtado’s confidence now betrays her initial introduction to The Big Smoke.

She arrived here from Victoria, B.C., at the ripe old age of 17, having just graduated from high school. The plan was to stay with her aunt for four months. She ended up staying a year, after forming the trip-hop group Nelstar.

“The first impression was, yeah, very overwhelming,” admits Furtado. “It was great for me. It was very eye-opening. Just even the culture here. People are more open-minded, obviously, in a big city than they are in a small city, so you experience a lot of new things. It really opens your mind up. And the music scene, obviously, is amazing and so fruitful.”

Furtado is referring to her “discovery” at Lee’s Palace three years ago after her performance at Honey Jam, a showcase for black female artists.

Her delivery of an original song led to her being sought out by Philosopher Kings frontman Gerald Eaton and his manager Chris Smith.

“Gerald came up and asked if I wanted to write songs,” remembers Furtado. “And I said, ‘Sure,’ but I wasn’t really that into it or whatever. I was but I wasn’t, ’cause I didn’t want to hear about management or anything like that at that point. And I had already booked my ticket. I was going to Europe, backpacking with my friends for the summer and then back to college.”

Furtado returned to Victoria to study creative writing at college while learning to play the guitar.

Whenever Philosopher Kings would come to town, Eaton would try to convince her to come out to Toronto for a week so he and bandmate Brian West could produce some demos.

Finally, a year later, she acquiesced.

“The three of us really clicked,” Furtado says. “They made me less scared of my popness. ‘Cause when I did trip-hop, I did write hookier stuff than what was prevalent in that scene. I didn’t really fit into that. I wasn’t quite cool enough for it.”

Not only that, but her music was so strong that Furtado wound up getting directly signed to DreamWorks Records in the U.S. after being pursued by several labels.

Her ear-catching demos also featured a self-written stream-of-consciousness bio and pictures from a photo booth she took in a Toronto shopping centre.

“From day one, we set out to have this really Nelly, straight-up project and people got it and they liked it,” says Furtado.

In Canada, she is distributed by Universal Records, which also has plans to release the album in England and Germany. But Furtado is clearly more jazzed about the fact that the first single, I’m Like A Bird, is already a Top 10 single in Portugal, where the album will be released in November.

She describes her hard-to-describe sound (think Macy Gray meets Ivana Santilli), as the product of a desire to move beyond the kinds of music that had always emotionally moved her.

Helping nudge her along were records by Cornershop, Beck and Finley Quaye.

“The styles I was into before were a little more melancholic,” says Furtado. “Kind of like Portishead and Radiohead and stuff like that. It’s great music, but it’s melancholy. And I think there was a point where I was sick of everything good having to be sad — including the music I was writing. And then I realised good music does not have to be sad, it can be poppy and wonderful and fun, and that’s the kind of record I want to make.

“I’m thinking, ‘I’m young, I don’t want to be touring a sad record.’ I want to be having fun on stage every night. I want to have the same energy that I’d seen on a hip-hop show.”

By Jane Stevenson, Toronto Sun  

“I heard my song on the radio for the first time this morning. It was, like, nine-fifteen in the morning and I was talking on the phone with my manager, telling him that the song was starting to get radio play, and I said, ‘Wait! It’s on right now!’ It was a moment. My manager told me that the first time you hear your song, it doesn’t really hit you, because you’re too tripped out. It’s true. I was thinking about stupid things like how the mix wasn’t quite right.

Typical me.

“There’s only a couple of things that are real in this business. There are the fans that listen to your music. And there are the record sales that indicate that someone has bought your record and has it sitting on their stereo. But television, radio, magazines, the whole business, those aren’t real. A lot of that is just work. A lot of it’s just stuff you have to do to get to that moment onstage where you can connect with your fans. And I think that moment overrides all the business. But the business stuff can be disheartening. It can be soul crushing.

“Musically, I’m totally a child of hip hop. I grew up in Victoria, which, believe it or not, does have a hip-hop scene. Victoria is sort of a smaller city, so there’s that suburban boredom thing where you hang out at McDonald’s and drink free coffee refills. We’d go to the mall and hang out with the hip-hop kids and you’d go to parties and there would be people rapping. I wrote rhymes for a while. So my music is infused with that hip-hop sensibility. But the music isn’t autobiographical. If I could describe it in a moment or a feeling, it’s like that moment when you’re watching a play and you really like it, but you don’t want to stand up to start the standing ovation because you’re afraid of being the first one to stand up. Well, my music is about being the first one to stand up.”

Nelly Furtado’s first album, Whoa, Nelly!, will be released 24th October on DreamWorks. She is currently touring with her band.

Saturday Night Magazine 

We’ve all heard the catch phrases. ‘Next big thing,’ ‘this year’s model’ – there are many ways to blow the trumpet of acclaim in the direction of a critical darling. Whether or not those darlings are always deserving is another story. In some unfortunate cases, the buzz accompanying an artist can be so loud that it overwhelms the actual music being made, and buries a promising career under heaps of hyperbole.

Rest assured then, dear reader, that Nelly Furtado has the goods. She’s a 21-year-old Canadian-Portuguese pop explosion waiting to detonate. And detonate she will once her debut album, the whimsically titled Whoa Nelly hits stores on 24th Oct. She’s already receiving acres of press in outlets that most artists three albums deep into their careers would kill for – Interview magazine, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone – the crème de la crème of North American music journalism is indulging in a practice they’re usually too jaded for, falling over themselves to anoint a rising star. The phrase ‘the next Macy’ (as in R&B sensation Macy Gray) has been uttered more than once. Is she at all worried about being overwhelmed by the accolades?

“We actually finished the record in April, and it was passed out to people in the industry in May or June, so for me it doesn’t feel that premature,” she says the day after a mesmerizing showcase performance in Toronto that left hundreds practically gasping for air (between gulps of beer). “And also the love for the record has been really organic – you know, we were at a radio station today that’s playing the song, and they said they had it at a meeting and just said ‘That’s a good song, let’s play it!’ So it’s been kind of natural.”

The song she’s talking about is current single ‘I’m Like a Bird,’ a breezy slice of pop that, once it inevitably hits the charts, will radiate some summer warmth even in chilly October. Still, even though she may seem calm and composed about her seemingly imminent ascent, there are still little things that surprise her. Just before kicking into the single onstage the night before, she asked the throngs sheepishly “Do you know this one?” She seemed genuinely thrilled with the responding roars.

“Last night was my first show post-radio, because the song only got released to radio last week. So yeah, it’s totally exciting – it’s a whole different ballgame. It’s a very difficult situation when you’re just going up cold, without the benefit of radio play. We’ve been on promotional tours, where you’re going out and playing for people in retail and radio, and I think a lot of people in the business are kind of jaded right now because there’s a lot of stuff out there right now that’s kind of prefabricated. Maybe people assume because I’m young, or they look at the cover, they’ll assume it’s not very good and so you do have to win them over at the show. If they’ve listened to the record, they’re usually convinced already.”

And for good reason. ‘Whoa Nelly’ is the sort of record that both critics and club kids can feel good about fawning over. There’s the genre-blurring, international flavour of the tracks that makes critics break out the hyphenated buzzwords, and there’s a literate sense that illustrates Furtado’s love for the written word (the only other thing she’s excited about doing besides music is creative writing). Not too many artists can throw the words ‘Mobius strip’ into a pop song as effortlessly as Furtado does in the hypnotic ‘Hey Man.’

But it’s not all about making the intelligentsia stroke its collective chin. Tracks like the TLC-esque ‘Turn Off The Light’ and the drum’n'bassified ‘Party’ have their sights set on one part of your anatomy – they head right to the booty, and hit the brain on the way up. That’s partly due to the stellar production from Gerald Eaton and Brian West (also known as two of the Philosopher Kings), but mostly due to Furtado’s sweeping musical tastes. She names Nusref Fateh Ali Khan, Jeff Buckley, Portishead and Eminem as important influences, seeing a thread amongst these seemingly disparate artists that inspires her work.

“I think there may be three threads. People like Nusref Fateh Ali Khan or Jeff Buckley used their voices as carriers, as a vessel towards transcendence. I think they really let their voices take them to another place, and I’m really intrigued by that. I’m intrigued by the idea of singing until you’re taken somewhere else, kind of stream-of-consciousness. But that connects to a lot of hip-hop a well – it’s all about the ‘now,’ very in the moment. And I’m very much about melody as well – I love artists like Elliot Smith because of his strong melodies. And I guess the flipside to that with artists like TLC, Mary J. Blige and LL Cool J…I like the posturing involved with a lot of urban music, you can become a different person or a character. On my record, on ‘I’ll Make You Cry’ and ‘Baby Girl,’ I can say things there that I’d never say in real life, like ‘I’ll never be your baby girl!’ I’d never say that in real life, you know?”

With a new eagerly-awaited album in the can, tour dates on the way and major TV appearances in the week ahead (Canada’s Mike Bullard show on 17th Oct and Jay Leno on 20th Oct), Furtado will have ample opportunity to find all the parts of herself that might pop up in future songs. It’s a great new chapter for a career that started in earnest at the age of 17, singing with a trip-hop group and turning down offers for management even then. It wasn’t until a performance at a family function that “the light bulb in my head” went off, and pointed the way to today. And as she prepares to fill the day with many more interviews, recounting that moment shines a light on the motives behind Furtado’s music. It’s not all about radio spins, photo shoots, or shiny superlatives. To use one of her favourite words, it’s about fulfilling a more ‘organic’ need.

“The moment where I decided it was time was at my grandmother’s birthday party. There was kind of a lot of people, it was at a restaurant, and I’d written some songs in Portuguese on the guitar. So I performed a couple of them, and it was weird, because all of a sudden my family kind of went ‘Wow.’ And from that day forward my mum was saying ‘Do what you want to do. ‘ And I was still trying to figure out what to do with my life, writing or singing. And somebody asked me ‘What do you do naturally? Why do you write songs?’ and I just said ‘I have no idea.’ And there was the answer. Whatever I do naturally, without thinking, is what I have to be doing…for now, anyway.”

By Barry Walsh, HMV.com