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
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