Photo illustration: Vulture; Photo: Cindy Ord/Getty Images
Before his first album, 2000s Wow, Nelly!grabbed the world by the horns, Nelly Furtado spent months begging radio stations to play her songs, sweetening the deal with free pizza. Most of the DJs she tried to convince were turned off not only by the pizza but by Furtado’s music: a mix of trip-hop, pop, bossa nova and fado. But those who played her hit singles—“I’m Like a Bird,” “Turn Out the Lights”—quickly found a receptive audience. By the time Furtado teamed up with Timbaland for the brilliant, $100 million-selling 2006 album, CowardIt was literally everywhere; you couldn’t leave the house that summer without hearing “Maneater” or “Promiscuous.”
““It’s like we see the beautiful monster in each other,” she says of herself. working with the producer. “It was a rare thing, to be with someone who really vibrated with you on that frequency.”
But Furtado soon grew uncomfortable with the level of fame she had achieved, and in 2017, she took a break. It wasn’t until she started scrolling through TikTok — where fans remixed her hits — and hearing her old songs played at the grocery store that she felt some peace with her fame. Last year, she performed “I’m Like a Bird” in front of more than 35,000 fans at Drake’s OVO Fest, where the rapper declared her one of his “favorite artists of all time.”
Today, Furtado is taking full advantage of her second coming, with a new album, 7 – his first full-length album in seven years, which will be released in September. Comprised of around 500 songs, the record is a mix of up-tempo dance tracks and salsa-inspired rhythms.
“I don’t question my choices anymore,” she says, reflecting on some of the highlights of her more than two-decade career. “When you make music, everything starts with your own wings and your own thoughts, and everything goes into the unconscious and the subconscious.”
In 2001, Missy Elliott asked me to do an official remix of her song “Get Ur Freak On.” It’s not available on streaming platforms because the remix was meant for radio only. I was 22 years old and Missy asked me to do it because she had seen the video for “Like a Bird.” So it was just me, her, and an engineer in a studio. I thought, I have to do something special. I ended up doing my own style of rap singing. I had started cultivating that in the late ’90s, just experimenting with that vocal style. And then after that, I got asked by so many different rappers to do remixes. It really changed the trajectory of my career.
I started out as a little trip-hop band in Toronto. I moved there specifically for the music scene. I was this kid who would go to the studio late at night, spending every penny I had on a session. At the time, the Toronto scene was the best kept secret. Everyone was making amazing music here. This electronic and urban scene was booming, and it really felt like I was catching a seed before it hatched. But now everyone knows about Toronto, and that’s why I keep making music here, because you can literally find the best musician in town playing at a bar.
I’m really enjoying the music world right now because I think it really fits my personality. I’m very social and I like making music with a community, exchanging ideas at a fast pace because I have inattentive ADHD, so anything that’s exciting is a great fit for me. And the way things work with social media now – you can have artist-to-artist relationships quite easily and so you get more work done faster. It really allows you to be in the moment, be spontaneous and go with the flow.
I loved finding so many remixes of my songs on social media. Recently at the Junos, which is kind of the Canadian version of the Grammys, I opened the show with the TikTok remix of “Say It Right.” I had been messaging the DJ who was behind the remix, and he was really sweet and enthusiastic. I also love all of Altégo’s remixes. They’ve remixed a lot of my records, and I want to explore remixing more.
There was a show on the BBC called The top of the pops. A really iconic show. And I remember being in London doing it. I think that’s when I thought: All right, NOW This is a big deal. In addition, I am asked to do Saturday Night Live when I had barely watched any TV. I was so nervous, but also impressed that they even asked me to come.
Gratitude. I was 21 or 22 and I was playing at Slane Castle in Dublin. I literally felt that moment like I felt when I was 4 years old the very first time I played in my church hall in front of 300 people. I had a vision of playing in front of thousands of people for the very first time on that stage. And when I was at Slane Castle, that was the vision. That was what I had dreamed of. And touring with Bono was special because he would write handwritten notes to the artists and leave them in our dressing rooms with a flower. That’s such a big deal when you’re a young artist. I was really grateful for that. I actually have those notes somewhere. I’ll have to find them.
Well, I agree with songs that are successful years later. There’s a DJ from the UK called Rain Radio. They remixed a song called “Big Hoops” from my 2013 album. Indestructible spirit and turned it into an incredible dance song in the UK. It was like a top 40 hit in the UK. So that’s the best-case scenario, when you put out a song that originally had an audience but wasn’t a hit in every way, but other people come along and make it a hit. I love remix culture for that reason. Take it and give it a new lease on life. It’s almost like one of your kids was rescued from an orphanage.
I guess the coolest thing I’ve seen about him is that the music is literally Inside his body. If it made him want to move his body a certain way, he would add another percussive element. You see, the music is in his bones. I think that’s why we get along so well. It’s like the music is in our ribs. It’s part of us.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to put out “Promiscuous” because it was so different from anything I had put out before. It was definitely a radical departure. But Timbaland had Jim Beanz as his vocal producer, who I still work with today. Tim knew that I had a lot of trust in Jim, so he invited him to come into a little room in the studio and tell me all the reasons why I should put out “Promiscuous,” and how he felt it was authentic to me and where I was at. I expressed my fears about it, and he kind of pushed me to cross the line. I think sometimes we fear the things that reveal the most about ourselves.
I had a senior thesis about my sexuality and how “safely exotic” my image was. I guess promiscuous is a really trendy word. But for girls, it wasn’t new. I mean, I grew up with Salt-N-Pepa, TLC. “Promiscuous” just had my influences in there, and in that song and the whole album, I was critiquing the genre. But what surprised me was that people felt like it wasn’t authentic. It’s interesting. Now, years later, I see people dancing to that song in clubs and sharing their stories about it. I’m proud of that, and I’m proud of the kind of liberation that people can express when they dance to that song.
Oh, I would say the song about my father on Folklore. It’s called “Picture Perfect.” It’s about him immigrating to Canada in the late ’60s and me looking at photo albums of him from the ’70s and how cool he looked and the idea of someone chasing a new dream in another country and all that goes with it. It’s a very personal song. It goes pretty deep.
I would say without hesitation that my Spanish album My plan, because it’s all in Spanish and I co-wrote all the songs. I had taken Spanish in high school, and obviously being from Portugal made it easier, but I’ve done press tours and full interviews in Spanish, so I’m proud of that.
“Say It Right,” because it was so weird. A few days before it came out, I remember putting it in my car on Queen Street in Toronto, somewhere outside the studio, and going into a trance. I really have no idea what that song is about. It’s like you understand what you’re feeling when you hear it, but putting it into words is so hard, you know? But I really think it’s almost an epic. It has a kind of hero’s journey vibe to it. There’s a kind of pathos to the song that I can’t quite put into words.
Just one song?! Well, I mean “I’m Like a Bird.” It’s just happy and positive, it’s joyful. I’d be happy to have just that one.
Thank you for asking me this question. It’s strange and wacky, but I really like birds. I feel like I have a special connection with eagles. The eagle is without a doubt my favorite bird. Strong and rare.