The two singers met up in Miami while both were recording their respective next albums with songwriter/producer Timbaland, who helped supply the necessary introductions. “I had met Justin briefly before, but I hadn’t really hung out with him,” Furtado said. Still, they felt like they knew each other — they had so many mutual friends and collaborators, such as Pharrell Williams, who had worked with Timberlake previously and had just teamed up with Furtado for her new record as well. “Supposedly it was Pharrell’s idea for me to work with Tim too,” Furtado laughed. “Jimmy Iovine, the head of my record label [Interscope], might beg to differ.”

After deciding they were like “distant cousins,” Timberlake and Furtado started tinkering around with a song called “Crowd Control” just for fun, without worrying where it might be released (see “Justin Timberlake ‘In A Good Place’ With His Collabos”). “It’s just a cute, clubby, upbeat, fun track,” she said. “It’s kind of sexy. I like it.” Working with the former ‘NSYNC singer also gave Furtado a new respect for him.

“You know what’s cool about Justin? He has his own style,” she said. “He has his own unique take on melody, and he has his own unique take on lyrics — and he’s specific about lyrics. We’re writing the song, I gave him a melody, he gave me a lyric, back and forth, back and forth, and he was really specific about how he wanted them to sound.

“It takes a lot to come from a place where you don’t have any credibility at all, like in the so-called ‘serious’ music world, to get to the point where you’re jamming with the Rolling Stones,” she continued, referring to when Timberlake joined the Stones at a Toronto SARS benefit (see “Justin Timberlake Joins Stones At Toronto Benefit, Gets Pelted With Garbage”). “You’re up there? You’re a real musician. I think it’s great. I love underdogs. I love it when people come out and prove other people wrong — it’s like, ‘Yeah, you go!’ ”

The part Furtado liked best, though, was that working with the two Tims — Timberlake and Timabaland — didn’t feel like work at all. “It’s like a little camp, you know?” she said. “Justin’s amazing. He’s really inspiring as an individual because he’s really evolved. He’s really calm and comfortable in his own skin. He’s really grounded, and really funny and laid back at the same time.”

That made it easy to hand over the song, even though having a Timberlake track could have given a little bit of extra value to Furtado’s album. But she wasn’t basing what made the cut for her album “Loose” on the celebrity factor — sonics and flow were more important — so she also set aside tracks she’d worked on with Pharrell and Scott Storch, and Timberlake took “Crowd Control” for his album instead.

“We’re all in it for the music,” she said. “We’re all creative, we like having fun and putting out good music. Justin has the same interest: just put out a good album, front to back, so everything’s going to be hot, hot, hot. You know it’s going to be good because there aren’t any leftover tracks or sloppy seconds.”

Still, Furtado cautions that their collaboration might end up as a bonus track or import version of Timberlake’s album, because while her album’s already finished and ready to be released on 20th June (USA), 12th June (Rest of the World), his is still in the mixing phase, so anything could happen. “I know they’re going to be using it, but I don’t know if it’s going to be on the U.S. release,” she said. “It might have to be one of those things you have to dig around for.”

— Jennifer Vineyard

Source: MTV

Attendees included TATU, Sean Paul, Nelly Furtado, Craig David, Akon, Shakira, System Of A Down, Shaggy, Black Eyed Peas, Pussycat Dolls, John Legend, Flypside and Abel Xavier.

There were performances from Flypside who were joined by Nelly Furtado with an impromptu song. Other performers were Pussycat Dolls, Sean Paul and Shaggy with Ray Von.

Trevor Nelson was joined by guest co host Shaggy to capture all of the action for MTV Base and interview the stars.

Catch the highlights in Trevor’s EMA Diary premiering on Base this Sunday, 6th November at 8pm…

Source

{gallery [MTV_EMAs_2005_Lisboa_Portugal]}

High Quality Images – Some of these images are over 1mb.

{gallery [nelly_furtado_MTV_EMAs_2005_HQ]}

Read more and reply: http://www.burninthespotlight.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4560

If you are not fortunate enough to have a TV station near you air MTV EMAs 2005, you can watch them online here: http://ema.mtv.tv/ema2005/videoconsole/index.html

@ 22:00 on 3rd November 2005

Read more and reply here: http://burninthespotlight.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4552

[2005_MTV_VMA_verizon_wireless_suite_day_1] – NEED TO FIND

{ gallery [nelly_furtado_2005_MTV_VMA_red_carpet] }

High Quality Photos! Around 1MB Each.

{ gallery [nelly_furtado_2005_MTV_VMA_red_carpet_HQ] }

{gallery [nelly_furtado_party_at_mansion_nightclub]}

{ gallery [nelly_furtado_MTV_VMA_pre_party_HQ] }

{ gallery [2005_MTV_VMA_style_villa] }

She loves Mary J. Blige and Tropicalia experimentalist Tom Ze. Her lyrics are influenced by gutter poet Jim Carroll, but also the singing of Mariah Carey. She plays ukulele and trombone and can shimmy across the stage like a guitar-strumming Britney. She’s Toronto’s Nelly Furtado and her debut, Whoa Nelly!, is the sound of the teen-pop revolution growing up.

Even before she’d finished recording her debut, Furtado was invited to join 1999′s Lilith Fair for four dates, playing alongside such heavies as Sheryl Crow and tour founder Sarah McLachlan. And while songs such as the acoustic pop-rocker “Hey, Man” and the Brazilian techno tune “Baby Girl” have the requisite radio-friendly hooks, Furtado has spiced the arrangements with flugelhorn, Portugal’s Fado style of music, turntable scratching and South American percussion. She’s definitely got some singer/songwriter chops.

From what she can tell, her mixed-up style has already begun to have an effect on her fans. “There’s certain kids that show up at my show and they’ll give me a mix tape, and it’ll have everything from DJ Shadow to Kid Koala to Elliott Smith to Ani DiFranco to Bebel Gilberto, and I’ll think, ‘Wow, they get it,’ ” the 21-year-old singer said in an interview with Mike Davis for MTVi News. “I just know that I’m addressing something that hasn’t been addressed yet in the pop world.”

MTVi News: How did you get your start in the music business?

Nelly Furtado: I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, performing-wise. The first time I performed I was four. [It was] a duet with my mother in Portuguese, so I was singing in Portuguese before English. I started writing songs when I was about 12. [I was] infatuated with urban music, I wrote books and books of R&B kind of songs. I had my room plastered with WordUp! and Rap Pages magazine. The first musicians I came into contact with were hip-hop musicians, MCs and DJs.

I met some kids that were from the States; they went to a boarding school in Victoria, [Canada]. One of them was in a hip-hop group, [he] knew a producer in Toronto. On my way out to Portugal one summer on holiday, I stopped there [and] did some tracks with them. My first recording experience was doing back-up vocals for a hip-hop group. I was 16 years old.

I did that for about a year, even filmed a video. But at 18, I wasn’t ready to pursue music professionally. I wasn’t writing songs on guitar yet, I wasn’t writing complete singer/songwriter-style songs and I felt like that was the last frontier. I moved back to Victoria for a year to go to college, studied writing, and I learned guitar and started writing songs. And I was doing more experimental stuff with DJ friends who lived in the city and just doing techno and ambient and house stuff, always having a solid footing in both pop writing and the technological, progression kind of thing.

MTVi News: Can you explain the sound? It’s very wide open.

Furtado: I think it’s a pop record, because I feel that even when I was writing, in that trip-hop, more street scene, the stuff I was writing was a bit more hooky than that scene. When I started playing guitar, I started writing these more traditional pop songs. What I set out to do with Whoa, Nelly! was make a record that was under the pop umbrella, but combined more elements of my Portuguese heritage. And used Brazilian percussion.

From the scenes that I come out of, you hear the hip-hop on the record, and you hear the world element [and] you hear the techno element. I think hip-hop energy really runs through the record, and I think the spirit of that is stream-of-consciousness writing, and spontaneity.

MTVi News: What was it like growing up in Victoria?

Furtado: My parents are from the Azores Islands in Portugal. It was cool growing up first-generation Canadian, ’cause we spoke English at home, but I went to night school to learn Portuguese. In my church we had different festivals and so you’d get the culture, the folk dancing. I got a great cultural education, because I could be at an East Indian Banghla-dance one weekend, next weekend I’d be at a Latin dance, dancing to the merengue, and the next weekend be celebrating Chinese New Year.

MTVi News: Some of your songs deal with relationships. How do you come up with the lyrics?

Furtado: I write in two different styles. One style is, again, very stream-of-consciousness. I’m very inspired by the Beat poets, like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. When I was 14 I got a hold of a Jim Carroll novel ["The Basketball Diaries"] way too early. It was like, wow, street science and street energy and rawness. I think you hear that on tracks like “Party,” “I Will Make U Cry” and “Trynna Find a Way.”

MTVi News: Who would you say your main musical influences are?

Furtado: I’m very influenced by modern Brazilian artists, like Caetano Veloso and Tom Ze Brazilian music in general. The instrumentation is so diverse, and that’s what inspired the record a lot, because there are no rules, really. And Asian Dub Foundation and Cornershop, which I love as well. The lead singer combines his East Indian heritage under a pop umbrella, but there’s a slight political thread running through it. Which I like and you don’t really hear on my record; it’s not really a political record, but I love the energy of that. Jeff Buckley’s a huge influence. In the way that he used his voice as an instrument.

I listened to Mary J. Blige, religiously, [all] my life. Mariah Carey I listened to a lot when I was about 12, 13, because, technically, she’s a great singer, and not having lessons or anything, I’d flip the tape over and over again and memorise the licks.

Portishead was a huge influence, too. When I was 17 and I first moved to the city from the small town of Victoria, Portishead complemented those teen-angst depression years quite well [laughs].

MTVi News: How did you come to play so many different instruments?

Furtado: There was a great music programme at the school that I went to [and] at age nine, I started playing ukulele. I’d transpose Portuguese songs from a tape, and I’d sing them at folklore festivals. Then I started playing trombone at age 10 or 11. I played that for about nine years and it was a huge part of my life, because I was in jazz band, concert band and marching band. I write a lot of songs on guitar. I like to play some keyboards in the studio.

MTVi News: How do you think your sound will fit in alongside all the teen pop on the radio? Because it sounds nothing like that.

Furtado: I’m kind of excited, because I think what my record does is it hasn’t forgotten about the single. The beauty of it is, I think it addresses certain things you don’t hear on pop records. It has tons of counterculture references. I think kids that haven’t grown up in a world without hip-hop, they’re gonna understand the record, and so far it’s been that way with my fans. There’s certain kids that show up at my show and they’ll give me a mix tape, and it’ll have everything from DJ Shadow to Kid Koala to Elliott Smith to Ani DiFranco to Bebel Gilberto. And I’ll think, “Wow, they get it.” I just know that I’m addressing something that hasn’t been addressed yet in the pop world. That excites me a lot. The world influences on my record, and the fact that I’m Portuguese-Canadian, and coming from a different culture, I think that reflects the way the world is changing, and through the Internet and stuff, and people are learning about different cultures.

MTVi News: What is the message of the single, “I’m Like a Bird”?

Furtado: “I’m like a bird, I don’t know where my soul is, I don’t know where my home is.” That’s pretty cool, like does that mean you don’t know who you are still? On first look it seems like a love song. But then someone was saying the other day, “You should’ve had homeless people in your video.” And it would make sense, too, in a way. Just the idea of being a nomad and liking to wander a lot is a big part of who I am. I have a restlessness about me.

MTVi News: Do you have any funny stories about anything that’s happened to you since you got into the business?

Furtado: Somebody at the label told me that they got a phone call, and they were like, “OK, we wanna book Nelly with P.O.D. for a high-school tour.” And then she started explaining me to her, and then when the person on the other end of the line found out I was a female and a singer and stuff, she was like, “What are you talking about?” Because she thought I was the rapper Nelly. And wouldn’t it have been funny if they booked me with P.O.D.?

MTVi News: Tell us about some of the musicians on your album.

Furtado: Mike Elizondo plays bass on five of my songs, [and he] plays bass on every track on [Eminem's] The Marshall Mathers LP. He also plays on a lot of the Dr. Dre records. The cool thing about him is he’s a classically trained musician, so he can play the nice samba stuff up on upright bass on “Legend,” but he can also play like the hip-hop dub-y stuff on “Baby Girl.” I also brought in a Portuguese guitar player named Nuno Cristo. And Little Jazz, who is a champion hip-hop turntablist from Toronto. He’s 21 years old and he scratches on “On the Radio (Remember the Days).” I think the record reflects the diversity of influences right down to the session musicians we used.

MTVi News: How is that diversity reflected in your album?

Furtado: The record is kind of like a hologram, like the kind of stickers you move one way and you see one thing, and you move it the other way and you see another thing. It’s kind of how beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If it’s a kid who listens to hip-hop, or they get the beats, they get the rhythms, they get the energy, they get the style. If it’s an older person who listens to more singer/songwriter stuff, they’re into the passion of the lyrics and the passion of the melodies in the songs and the energy. If you’re a jazz listener or a world-beat listener, you’re appreciating the Brazilian percussion, and the Latin phrasing and the dub-y rhythms.