Nelly Furtado Biography
Nelly Furtado : Nelly Furtado's Biography
Nelly Kim Furtado
(born December 2, 1978) is a Canadian singer-songwriter,
instrumentalist, and record producer of Portuguese descent.
Nelly
Furtado came to fame in 2000 with the release of her debut album Whoa,
Nelly!, which featured the Grammy Award-winning single "I'm like a Bird"
and "Turn off the Light". After giving birth to daughter Nevis and
releasing the less commercially successful Folklore (2003), Nelly
Furtado returned
to prominence in 2006 with the release of Loose and its hit singles,
"Promiscuous" and "Maneater". Nelly Furtado has sold more than 10 million albums
worldwide.
Nelly
Furtado is known for her musical eclecticism, continually experimenting
with different instruments, sounds, genres, languages, and vocal styles.
This diversity has been influenced by her wide-ranging musical taste and
Nelly Furtado's interest in different cultures.
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Nelly Furtado, a
first-generation (Portuguese Canadian) was born as one of three children
to Maria Manuela and António José Furtado,Portuguese parents from São
Miguel Island in the Azores. Nelly Furtado was named after Soviet gymnast Nellie
Kim.
Nelly
Furtado's parents emigrated to Canada in the late 1960s from the Azores
Islands which are located about 1,500 km (900 miles) off the coast of
Portugal. Nelly Furtado has stated that visiting her parents' birthplace, the
Azores islands, as a child and experiencing its culture and learning the
Portuguese language has made Nelly Furtado an open-minded person. This has
strongly influenced Nelly Furtado's artistry as she has incorporated many
cross-cultural sounds into her music. It is also evident in Nelly
Furtado's
multilingualism as she can speak English, Portuguese, Spanish and, to a
lesser extent, Hindi. Nelly Furtado has acknowledged her parents as the source
of her strong work ethic; Nelly Furtado spent eight summers working as a
chambermaid with her mother, who was a housekeeper in Victoria. Nelly
Furtado has
stated that coming from a working class background has shaped her
identity in a positive way.
Nelly
Furtado first sang at the age of four when she performed a duet with her
mother at church on Portugal Day. Nelly Furtado began playing instruments at the
age of nine, learning the trombone, ukulele and, in later years, the
guitar and keyboard. Nelly Furtado began writing songs at the age of twelve and,
as a teenager, she played in a Portuguese marching band.
During these early years, Nelly Furtado embraced many musical genres,
listening heavily to mainstream R&B, hip hop, alternative rock,
alternative hip hop, trip hop, world music (including Portuguese fado,
Brazilian bossa nova, and Indian music), and a variety of others. Nelly
Furtado's
influences have included Jeff Buckley, Caetano Veloso, Amalia Rodrigues,
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Cornershop, Mariah Carey, TLC, Mary J. Blige,
Digable Planets, De La Soul, Radiohead, Oasis, The Smashing Pumpkins,
The Verve, U2, and Beck.
Nelly
Furtado's music has also been influenced by her current residence,
Toronto, which Nelly Furtado calls "the most multicultural city in the entire
world" and a place where Nelly Furtado "can be any culture". Growing up in Canada
and experiencing Toronto's cultural diversity, Nelly Furtado has said that she did
not have to wait for the Internet revolution to learn about world music;
Nelly Furtado began listening to it at the age of fifteen and continues to
discover new genres. In 2006, Nelly Furtado commented about her diverse taste:
Nelly Furtado says : " I always know there's a new genre left to
discover. For me, it's like a metaphor for life. I feel like if you can
get down with any style of music, you can get down with any style of
person. So it's fun for me—I get to expose my fans to different vibes
and they, in turn, open their minds too. I'm always undergoing mind-opening.
"The first musicians
Nelly Furtado
interacted with were underground rappers and DJs.During a visit to
Toronto, after the summer of eleventh grade, Nelly Furtado met Tallis Newkirk,
member of hip hop group Plains of Fascination and contributed vocals to
their 1996 album Join the Ranks on the track "Waitin' 4 the Streets".
Nelly Furtado spent the rest of that summer in Portugal, opening her mind to
native rock acts, and then returned to British Columbia. After
graduating from Mount Douglas Secondary School in 1996, Nelly Furtado moved to
Toronto where she eventually formed the trip hop duo Nelstar in 1997
with Newkirk. The experience led her back to Nelly Furtado's hip hop influences and
allowed Nelly Furtado to become more comfortable with writing her own melodies and
rhymes. Although, "Like", one of the songs Nelstar recorded, received a
VideoFACT grant to cover for the production of a music video, Nelly Furtado
felt the trip-hop style of the duo was "too segregated" and believed it
did not represent Nelly Furtado's personality or allow her to showcase her vocal
ability. Nelly Furtado left the group and decided to move back home.
Before moving, Nelly Furtado performed at the 1997 Honey Jam, a female,
mostly-black talent show at Toronto nightclub Lee's Palace. Nelly
Furtado
performed to a Digital Audio Tape in jeans and a t-shirt. At the club,
The Philosopher Kings singer Gerald Eaton (aka Jarvis Church) was
impressed with Nelly Furtado's performance and approached her to write with him.
Eaton and fellow Kings member Brian West, collectively known as Track
and Field, helped Nelly Furtado produce a demo, but Nelly Furtado already had plans to
backpack through Europe and return home to take creative writing courses
at Camosun College. Nelly Furtado stayed in touch with Eaton and West who insisted
that Nelly Furtado return to Toronto to record more material. Nelly
Furtado eventually
returned for two weeks; the material recorded during those sessions led
to Nelly Furtado's record deal with DreamWorks Records in 1999.
Nelly Furtado continued to collaborate with Eaton and West, who co-produced her debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, which was released in October 2000. The album saw major success all over the globe supported by its three singles, "I'm like a Bird", "Turn off the Light", and "...On the Radio (Remember the Days)". It received four Grammy nominations in 2002; Nelly Furtado's debut single won for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Furthermore, Nelly Furtado was critically acclaimed for her innovative mixture of various genres and sounds. Slant magazine called the album "a delightful and refreshing antidote to the army of 'pop princesses' and rap-metal bands that had taken over popular music at the turn of the millennium". The sound of the album was strongly influenced by musicians who had traversed cultures and "the challenge of making heartfelt, emotional music that's upbeat and hopeful". Following the release of the album, Nelly Furtado headlined the Burn in the Spotlight tour and also appeared on Moby's Area:One tour.