On Wednesday, 16th January 2002, I did something awful. Something that went against the very fabric of my being: I willfully listened to an entire Britney Spears album. And then I listened to the entire Whoa, Nelly! album by Nelly Furtado.
My findings: Britney Spears really is garbage. Absolute f*cking rubbish.
But with Whoa, Nelly!, I felt like Josh McDowell, who set out to disprove Christianity, but ended up giving his heart to The Big J.C..
Almost.
As Part II of my experiment, I spoke with Young Miss Furtado, undoubtedly offending her in the process.
“I started off independent,” she tells me, “with a trip hop band, making electronic music. This is just my next natural progression.”
Is she a co-conspirator with the Image Pop children?
“I wish I was like those musicians because they’ve got show biz chops,” she says. “They’ve been performing since they were children. I was just kind of a nerd writing songs in my room.”
Alright, I admit it. Whoa, Nelly! is basically what Britney and The Others desperately try to be. It’s definitely Pop, but it’s believable. It’s not assembled. It doesn’t sound like it was written by executives with ideas like, “well, the kids these days are really ‘down’ with that ‘hip-hop’ music.”
The bonerific Portuguese-Canadian culls from a variety of influences, be it bossa nova, dub, hip-hop, or Brazilian fado. She writes all her own music, plays all her own instruments, and she even co-produced the album. In the world of mainstream pop, Furtado is a rarity.
“[Pop music is] lowest common denominator a lot of the time,” she agrees. Britney Spears is kinda like the Campbell’s Soup kid. Andy Warhol would have loved her, ya know?
“She’s become an icon of some type of… I don’t know. She almost represents globalization, commercialism in a way. But not in a bad way. That’s just what she is and I think that’s what her appeal is. It’s like the Campbell’s Soup kid. Who knows if it’s evil or good, but it’s there, and somebody’s connecting to it. Musically…I don’t know.”
But image also plays an important part in the perception of Furtado and her music. Comparisons to Britney And The Others have indeed plagued her.
“It’s weird. I think I’ve shielded myself,” she says, audibly annoyed. “There’s a lot of things I do that people don’t see, but I just do for me ‘cause I love music. And it’s reflected in the people that want to work with me, the people that I do work with.”
True, Missy Elliott asked her to be on the “Get Ur Freak On” remix. True, Timbaland sampled her song “Baby Girl.” True, the Roots asked her to be on their upcoming album.
But then there’s this evidence: she wears a lot of cutesy, midriff-baring outfits. She’s done photo shoots for Teen People and Cosmo Girl. Her video for “Turn Off The Light,” with its bright, neon colors and zany dance antics, has a very Nickelodeon/Disney-esque feel to it (the album title, Whoa, Nelly!, goes without saying).
Whoa, Nelly! is a “fun” record. It has a distinctive Nelly sound, and in the land of MTV, it’s not so bad. But Grammy nods for Song of the Year (“I’m Like A Bird” and Best New Artist?)
By Scott Batiuk
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