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
on 
on