Nelly Furtado

Nelly Furtado at the Radio Regenbogen Award 2017 at Europa-Park in Rust

Logo until 2015

Nelly Kim Furtado (born December 2, 1978 in Victoria , British Columbia ) is a Portuguese - Canadian singer , songwriter , multi-instrumentalist and, among other things, Grammy award winner. She is also active as an actress and presenter and has released six albums since the turn of the millennium .

Life

Childhood and youth

Nelly Furtado was born the third child of Portuguese immigrants Maria Manuela and António José Furtado. It got its name after the Soviet gymnast Nelli Kim . In 1967, the parents fled the Salazar regime from their home community of Ponta Garça ( Vila Franca do Campo district , São Miguel island ) in the Azores and emigrated to Canada. Furtado was shaped early on by her ethnic background and the social position of her parents as housekeeping and stonemason. Her parents raised her according to the Roman Catholic faith and the belief that hard work is the only way to get ahead in life. She attended Mount Douglas Secondary School and, at the age of twelve, began working with her mother as a housekeeper at the Robin Hood Motel in Victoria that summer . She pursued this activity for a total of eight years.

In her youth, Furtado suffered from depression and had a bad relationship with her parents. Accordingly, after graduating from high school in 1996, she left home and moved to live with her sister in Toronto . In 1997 she returned to live with her parents in Victoria for a few months and enrolled at Camosun College . But after a short time she confronted her parents with the decision to leave college and concentrate entirely on music. Her parents agreed with this decision because they had previously criticized their daughter's discontinuation.

Musical roots

Furtado is fluent in English and Portuguese and has sung songs in these two languages ​​as well as in Spanish and Hindi . At the age of four she became enthusiastic about music and received piano lessons . She was inspired by her family, as her uncle and grandfather were musicians and her mother sang in a choir. Furtado learned to play the ukulele at the age of seven , the trombone at nine , keyboard at eleven and guitar a few years later . In addition, she took lessons in popular Portuguese dances in the church, which she regularly attended with her parents, and was also a member of a Portuguese brass band. At the age of twelve Furtado began to write her first songs. At first she was turned towards pop music , but as a teenager she opened up to a wide musical spectrum and listened mainly to R&B , hip-hop and Brazilian music. Through her brother, she also came into contact with the music of rock groups such as Radiohead , The Verve and Oasis . During a summer trip through Europe Furtado got to know the old Portuguese music genre Fado .

Private

After her success at the 2002 Grammy Awards, Furtado decided to lead a quieter life and raise a family. At the time, she was dating Jasper Gahunia, known as DJ Lil'Jaz. They had known each other for a number of years and also worked together musically. Gahunia was therefore also involved in the creation of the first two albums Furtados. A few months later, Furtado announced that she was pregnant by Gahunia and was expecting her first child. She gave birth to a daughter on September 20, 2003 in Toronto. In 2005, Furtado and Gahunia separated after a four-year relationship, but remained friends. She kept her relationship with the sound engineer Demacio “Demo” Castellón, who also worked on her third album Loose , a secret for a long time. In the summer of 2007, she announced her engagement to Castellón, followed by their secret wedding on July 19, 2008. During an appearance on the British TV talk show Loose Women in April 2017, she announced the separation from Castellón, which had already taken place in the summer of 2016. “I'm single now. Somebody has to update my Wikipedia entry - it doesn't help my love life like that! "

Musical career

Beginnings

During a stay in Toronto in the summer of 1995, Furtado met hip-hopper Tallis Newkirk from the group Crazy Cheese . Newkirk was so convinced of her musical abilities that he let her take part in the recordings for the group's new album, Join the Ranks . Furtado contributed the vocals for the song Waitin '4 the Streets .

While living in Toronto, Furtado wrote songs, recorded demo tapes and performed in various clubs with the trip-hop duo Nelstar , which she formed with Newkirk. Interest in Nelstar increased over time, but Furtado felt less and less connected to the musical style of the group, so that Nelstar broke up again after a few months.

Whoa, Nelly!

Even before she returned to Victoria in the meantime, Furtado took part in the Honey Jam , a talent show for R&B and hip-hop acts, in Toronto . When the then 18-year-olds performed, Gerald Eaton and Brian West from the soul-pop band The Philosopher Kings , who also worked as producers under the name Track & Field , became aware of Furtado. After moving to Toronto again in 1999 at the age of 20, she re-established contact with Eaton and West. Together with the two producers, Furtado wrote a few songs, some of which were later published on their debut album , and recorded a demo tape that was sent to the DreamWorks label . The recordings convinced those responsible and so Furtado got her first record deal in 1999. With Party's Just Begun (Again) , their first song was released on the soundtrack to the movie Brokedown Palace in the same year .

In October 2000 the Track & Field produced debut album Whoa, Nelly! , which combines pop , hip-hop and folk and contains elements of traditional music styles such as Brazilian bossa nova and Portuguese fado. The album initially went largely unnoticed, but the sales figures were boosted by Furtado's steadily increasing popularity through appearances on the Burn in the Spotlight tour in spring 2001 and as a supporting act for Moby's Area: One tour. The international success of the singles I'm Like a Bird and Turn Off the Light made Furtado known around the world in 2001, so that the debut album finally achieved gold and platinum status in numerous countries. Furtado's debut success peaked in 2002 with four Grammy nominations and winning a Grammy in the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance category for I'm Like a Bird . In addition, it had caught the attention of some established artists, so that several joint projects with them followed.

folklore

In autumn 2002, Furtado began recording their second album together with Track & Field. The work was delayed by her pregnancy at the time, so that the album Folklore was not released until November 2003, around two months after the birth of their daughter Nevis . The musical concept of the record mixes traditional Portuguese fado and modern pop. As inspiration for this, Furtado cited the appearance of an older Portuguese gentleman in jeans and a T-shirt with the inscription Coca-Cola, who she had met during her vacation in the Azores.

The songs are contrary to Whoa, Nelly! Mainly acoustically, in order to focus less on the background music and more on the melancholy and thoughtful texts. In these, Furtado primarily deals with her Portuguese roots and her working class background, as she wanted to process and explore the sudden commercial success of the past few years. In doing so, she avoids her previous abstract and metaphorical language and expresses her thoughts in a more direct and personal form. Although the songs follow earlier themes such as self-confidence, from a musical point of view, however, they are not comparable to the radio-suitable pop songs of the predecessor.

The reaction to the album was then also restrained, so that folklore lagged far behind the success of the debut. In the US , sales were only about a quarter of Whoa, Nelly! . In contrast, the album received far more attention in Germany . Furtado was able to place himself in the top ten of the German album and single charts for the first time with folklore as well as the singles Powerless (Say What You Want) and Força , the official title song for the 2004 European Football Championship in Portugal. She later suspected in an interview that German fans would like the album so much because of its deep thought. On July 4, 2004, Furtado was given the honor of presenting Força before the final of the European Football Championship at the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon and in front of 153 million television viewers. As a result, she largely withdrew into private life and devoted herself primarily to raising her daughter.

Loose

Furtado at Rock am Ring (2006)

Furtado at the Manchester Arena (2007)

Furtado's third album was to get a new style and so the old structures were resolved in advance. She had separated from her producer Track & Field and her old record company no longer existed, so she was now under contract with the Geffen Records label . After Furtado turned to a few other producers in vain, she finally came to an agreement with Timbaland , whom she had known since 2001 through working on the Get-Ur-Freak-On remix with Missy Elliott . The renewed collaboration went so well that instead of a single title, numerous new songs were created for their upcoming album. This was also reflected in the style of Furtado, which was now mainly characterized by hip-hop and R&B influences and which Furtado himself referred to as "punk-hop".

On June 9, 2006, their third and to this day most successful album Loose was finally released . Furtado stormed to number one in the album charts in numerous countries, something you had never done before with Whoa, Nelly! still succeeded with folklore . The singles released from Loose also became great international successes. The track All Good Things (Come to an End) , which she wrote together with Coldplay singer Chris Martin , topped the German single charts for six weeks. Say It Right was even able to sell over seven million units worldwide, making it the most successful single in Furtado's career and her record company to date.

At the same time it became clear that Furtado had noticeably changed its image. In the new music videos, she was much more lascivious and revealing than before, which is why fans and the media accused her of trying to achieve higher sales figures by overemphasizing her sexuality . Consequently, the offered Playboy end of 2006 500.000 US dollars for nude photography; However, Furtado declined the offer.

In February 2007 Furtado started their most extensive world tour to date with the Get Loose Tour , which also included a performance in their hometown of Victoria. In this context, their representatives declared March 21st (beginning of spring) to be the annual Nelly Furtado Day . Immediately after the huge commercial success of their third album, Furtado was urged by Geffen Records to re-record Loose in Spanish. However, she was not enthusiastic about this idea and rejected her record company.

Wed plan

Furtado at her induction ceremony on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto (2010)

In October 2008, Furtado began work on her fourth studio album, Mi plan, with her longtime friend and guitarist of the Philosopher Kings , James Bryan . However, she was very dissatisfied with her first recording, an English-language title and did not know how to overcome her creative block. The Cuban- Canadian singer and songwriter Alex Cuba, who was also involved in the production of Mi plan , was finally able to convince Furtado to fulfill her long-awaited wish and record an album in only Spanish. Previously, she had always refused to do so due to her inadequate knowledge of Spanish. For Furtado, the Spanish language was a new source of energy and inspiration after the past stressful years, which made it easier for her to express her thoughts and emotions.

All titles are based on real emotions and self-experienced situations and for the first time deal primarily with the topic of love . Therefore, Furtado describes Mi plan as her most personal album to date. Furtado's fourth work also includes numerous collaborations with internationally, in some cases less well-known, artists, some of whom can be assigned to the field of Latin Pop , including Concha Buika , Alex Cuba, Alejandro Fernández, Josh Groban , Juan Luis Guerra , Mala Rodríguez and Julieta Venegas .

Furtado had also decided to release a Portuguese-language album at the same time. While working on the album, however, she realized that such a project would require a more intensive examination of Portuguese musical culture, which is why she postponed it indefinitely. In addition, she separated from Geffen Records and founded her own music label with Nelstar in early 2009 , which was conceived as an indie label and is part of the Canadian label group Last Gang.

Mi plan was released on September 11, 2009 in Germany in cooperation with Nelstar and the Universal Music Latino subsidiary of the major label Universal Music Group . After all, the album achieved gold status in Germany. The worldwide sales figures did not come close to those of the previous albums, so that Mi plan was Furtado's lowest commercial success to date.

On February 12, 2010, Furtado performed together with Bryan Adams during the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver , followed two days later by an hour-long performance as part of a series of Olympic concerts.

On November 12, 2010, Furtado's first greatest hits album entitled The Best of Nelly Furtado , which also contains three new songs, was released on the occasion of their ten-year stage anniversary .

The Spirit Indestructible

Furtado started work on her fifth studio album even before Mi plan was released. She wanted to release it as early as the spring of 2010 under the title Lifestyle , but after her multi-week Mi plan tour in the same year decided to continue the work and bring the album onto the market under a new name at a later date. Before the start of the recordings, however, Furtado felt reluctance and uncertainty about her musical career and seriously toyed with the idea of ​​ending it and becoming active in other artistic fields of activity. During the recording, however, she changed her mind and finally released her fifth work The Spirit Indestructible in September 2012 .

From a musical point of view, this is a mixture of all of their previous albums, but urban sounds are again more in the foreground. So by their own account it contains the rough edges of Whoa, Nelly! , the melancholy of folklore , the dynamism of Loose and the passion of Mi plan . At the same time, the memories of her youth and the associated artistic career form the musical and textual foundation of The Spirit Indestructible . Further leitmotifs are spirituality and the associated belief in one's own inner strength, which are influenced, among other things, by Furtado's experiences on her charitable trips to Kenya in 2011. In addition, the singer was inspired by the courage and confidence of the people who took part in the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement or who survived major natural disasters such as the Tōhoku earthquake in Japan in 2011 . Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins and Salaam Remi, but also Michael Angelakos, the lead singer of the electro-pop band Passion Pit , were the main producers on the album. Jerkins is also responsible for the music that Furtado heard himself as a teenager in the 1990s and which in turn was the source of inspiration for The Spirit Indestructible .

While critics particularly praised the diversity of Furtado's first English-language album in over six years, the sales figures again fell well short of expectations. The two singles Big Hoops (Bigger the Better) and Spirit Indestructible , released in advance, could not even come close to building on the high chart positions of the loose singles. In contrast, The Spirit Indestructible was in Germany, Austria and Switzerland alone at the top of the album charts.

The ride

After a musical break of several years, Furtado announced a new album for the following year in the summer of 2016. Two tracks were supposed to serve as “appetizers”, but later they would only be featured on the deluxe version of the album: Behind Your Back was first released exclusively on Spotify on July 13th, followed by Islands of Me on September 9th .

Furtado's sixth studio album The Ride was released on March 31, 2017. The advance single Pipe Dreams was released on November 15, 2016, and the track Cold Hard Truth at the end of January 2017 .

Acting

Already with her breakthrough in 2001, Furtado expressed the wish to want to work as an actor in addition to a musical career. She gained her first experience in theater performances during her school days. To improve her acting skills, she has been taking classes for several years. She declared participation in a movie to be her primary goal. In 2006 she was in discussion for the independent drama Nobody's Hero , but the project failed because she had no time to record because of the promotion for her third album Loose . So far, she has had guest appearances in several US and Portuguese series such as 2007 in CSI: NY . The following year she played the role of Christa Balder , the wife of a friend of the eponymous Max Payne , played by Mark Wahlberg in the movie Max Payne .

Discography

→ Main article : Nelly Furtado / Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)						Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US	CA
2000	Whoa, Nelly!	DE14th gold (50 weeks)DE	AT37 (42 weeks) AT	CH6th platinum (49 weeks)CH	UK2 × 2 Double platinum (50 weeks)UK	US24 × 2 Double platinum (79 weeks)US	CA2 × 4 Quadruple platinum (26 weeks)CA	First published: October 24, 2000 Sales: + 5,160,000
2003	folklore	DE4 (49 weeks) DE	AT10 (39 weeks) AT	CH13 platinum (44 weeks)CH	UK11 gold (26 weeks)UK	US38 gold (11 weeks)US	CA18th platinum (… Where.)CA	First published: November 23, 2003 Sales: + 950,000
2006	Loose	DE1 × 5 Quintuple platinum (102 weeks)DE	AT1 × 2 Double platinum (62 weeks)AT	CH1 × 5 Quintuple platinum (83 weeks)CH	UK4th × 3 Triple platinum (87 weeks)UK	US1 platinum (70 weeks)US	CA1 × 5 Quintuple platinum (35 weeks)CA	First published: June 9, 2006 Sales: + 8,900,000
2009	Wed plan	DE5 gold (16 weeks)DE	AT6 (9 weeks) AT	CH3 gold (13 weeks)CH	-	US39 platinum (3 weeks)US	CA20 (1 week) CA	First published: September 11, 2009 Sales: + 185,000
2012	The Spirit Indestructible	DE3 (5 weeks) DE	AT8 (4 weeks) AT	CH3 (10 weeks) CH	UK46 (1 week) UK	US79 (1 week) US	CA18 (1 week) CA	First published: September 14, 2012
2017	The ride	DE65 (1 week) DE	-	CH41 (1 week) CH	-	-	CA76 (1 week) CA	First published: March 31, 2017

Filmography (selection)

• 2007: CSI: NY (TV series, season 3, episode 15: Bloody Labyrinth )
• 2008: Max Payne
• 2010: Score: A Hockey Musical
• 2012: 90210 (TV series, one episode)
• 2015: A Date With Miss Fortune

Trivia

• At the beginning of 2007, Furtado was number one in the German album, single and download charts for several weeks with Loose and All Good Things (Come to an End) .
• For over 1 million digital units of her album Loose and the associated singles sold, Furtado received the newly created Platinum Digital Award following her Berlin concert on March 12, 2007 . She is the first artist who was able to cross the million mark.
• From June 26, 2006 to June 15, 2008, Loose was consistently represented in the top 100 of the German album charts for a total of 103 weeks. In just under two years, Furtado's third work was in the top ten for 49 weeks, eight of which were number one. In 2007 it was the most successful album in Germany and was ranked twelfth in the list of the best-selling albums of the first decade of the 21st century.
• In early March 2011, Furtado decided to use the $ 1 million fee she had received for a 45-minute performance for the Gaddafi clan in Italy for a charitable cause. In the same year, she also donated a million dollars to the organization Free The Children , which works for children in Kenya .
• In 2014 Furtado received the honorary award of the German Sustainability Award for her exemplary humanitarian commitment, which mainly benefits young women in East Africa.

Awards

→ Main article : List of awards from Nelly Furtado

Web links

Commons : Nelly Furtado  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Official website of Nelly Furtado
• Nelly Furtado at SoundCloud
• Nelly Furtado at MusicBrainz (English)
• Nelly Furtado at laut.de
• Nelly Furtado at the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ethnicelebs.com/nelly-furtado
2. ↑ Bravo: Nelly Furtado: As a teenager I had depression (from March 14, 2007)
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} David A. Keeps (Rolling Stone): Fly Girl (from July 25, 2001)
4. ↑ arjanwrites music blog: Nelly Furtado Embraces Diversity (from January 16, 2004)
5. ↑ Victoria de Silverio (Blender Magazine): Free as a Bird ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (from June 27, 2006)
6. ↑ Lesley Messer (People.com): Nelly Furtado: I'm Married (October 17, 2008)
7. ↑ After 8 years! Nelly Furtado and her husband are separated . In: Promiflash.de . ( promiflash.de [accessed April 12, 2017]).
8. ↑ All EM songs - EM 2020 official anthem. fussball-em-2020.com, accessed on March 4, 2020 . 
9. ↑ Jolie Lash (Rolling Stone): Nelly Furtado Brings the Punk-Hop (from February 16, 2006)
10. ↑ John Intini (Macleans.ca): Nelly Furtado: I'm Not Mother Teresa ( Memento from October 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (from August 25, 2006)
11. ↑ Tom Breihan (The Village Voice): Mutating Like Avian Flu ( Memento from September 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (from May 24, 2006)
12. ↑ laut.de: Attractive offer from Playboy (from November 24, 2006)
13. ↑ Clark Collis (Entertainment Weekly): Nelly Furtado Talks About Her New Album and Reteaming with Timbaland (July 30, 2009)
14. ↑ Contactmusic.com: Nelly Furtado Inspired by Spanish Songs (July 28, 2009)
15. ^ Robert Thompson and Jen Wilson (Nelly Furtado): Nelly Furtado Builds on Her Global Strength with Her First Spanish Language Album ( Memento from August 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (from July 30, 2009)
16. ↑ Kai Butterweck (laut.de): Nelly Furtado: I have no right to think of myself as something better (from September 14, 2012)
17. ↑ Nelly Furtado (Nelly Furtado Daily): Nelly's own written TSI Bio ( Memento from October 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (from May 12, 2012)
18. ↑ Thomas Porwol: Nelly Furtado announces new album , Musikexpress , July 18, 2016
19. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US / CA
20. ↑ mediabiz.de: Nelly Furtado brings universal download record (from March 13, 2007)
21. ↑ SPIEGEL ONLINE: Fee repayment: Nelly Furtado and the Gaddafi million (from March 1, 2011)
22. ↑ Universal Music Germany: Donates $ 1 million for “Free The Children” (October 2, 2011)
23. ↑ Nelly Furtado received the honorary award of the German Sustainability Award 2014 ( Memento from December 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved June 3, 2015.