Nelly Kim Furtado (born December 2, 1978) is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She has sold over 45 million records, including 35 million in album sales worldwide, making her one of the most successful Canadian artists. Critics have noted Furtado's musical versatility and experimentation with genres.
Furtado rose to prominence with her trip hop-influenced debut studio album, Whoa, Nelly! (2000), which was a critical and commercial success and spawned the top-10 Billboard Hot 100 singles "I'm Like a Bird" and "Turn Off the Light". The former track earned her a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. She followed it with the more introspective, folk-oriented Folklore (2003), which drew on her Portuguese heritage and performed less successfully than her debut.
Her third studio album, Loose (2006), sold over 10 million copies worldwide, becoming her best-selling release and one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century. Marked by a reinvention of her image and sound, the album produced the worldwide number-one singles "Promiscuous" (featuring Timbaland), "Maneater", "Say It Right", and "All Good Things (Come to an End)". During this period, she also featured alongside Justin Timberlake on Timbaland's "Give It to Me" (2007) and recorded the European hit duet "Broken Strings" with James Morrison (2008).
Furtado later released Mi Plan (2009), a Spanish-language album, which won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Album, followed by The Spirit Indestructible (2012). After becoming independent, she released The Ride (2017) through her own label, Nelstar Entertainment [pt], and 7 (2024). Throughout her career, she has received numerous accolades, including one Grammy Award from seven nominations, one Latin Grammy Award, ten Juno Awards, one Brit Award, one Billboard Music Award, one MTV Europe Music Award, one World Music Award, and three MuchMusic Video Awards. She also has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame and was appointed a Commander of the Order of Prince Henry in 2014.
Furtado was born on December 2, 1978, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Her Portuguese parents, António José Furtado and Maria Manuela Furtado, were born on São Miguel Island in the Azores and had immigrated to Canada in the late 1960s. Nelly was named after Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim. Her elder siblings are Michael Anthony and Lisa Anne. They were raised Catholic. At age 4, she began performing and singing in Portuguese. Furtado's first public performance was when she sang a duet with her mother at a church on Portugal Day. She began playing musical instruments at the age of nine, learning the trombone, ukulele and, in later years, the guitar and keyboards. At the age of 12, she began writing songs, and as a teenager, she performed in a Portuguese marching band. Furtado has acknowledged her family as the source of her strong work ethic; she spent eight summers working as a chambermaid with her mother, along with her brother and sister, who was a housekeeper in Victoria.
After graduating from Mount Douglas Secondary School in 1996, she moved to Toronto to live with her sister. There, she got a full-time job at an alarm company. Later, she met Tallis Newkirk, member of the hip-hop group Plains of Fascination. She contributed vocals to their 1996 album, Join the Ranks, on the track "Waitin' 4 the Streets". The following year, she formed Nelstar, a trip hop duo with Newkirk. Ultimately, Furtado felt the trip hop style of the duo was "too segregated", and believed it did not represent her personality or allow her to showcase her vocal ability. She left the group and planned to move back home.
In 1997, she performed at the Honey Jam talent show. Her performance attracted the attention of The Philosopher Kings singer Gerald Eaton, who then approached her to write with him. He and fellow Kings member Brian West helped Furtado produce a demo. She left Toronto, but returned again to record more material with Eaton and West. The material recorded during these sessions was shopped to record companies by her attorney Chris Taylor and led to her 1999 record deal with DreamWorks Records, signed by A&R executive Beth Halper, partner of Garbage drummer and record producer Butch Vig. Furtado's first single, "Party's Just Begun (Again)", was released that year on the soundtrack album for Brokedown Palace (1999).
2000–2005: Whoa, Nelly! and Folklore
Furtado continued the collaboration with Eaton and West, who co-produced her debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, which was released in October 2000. The album was an international success, supported by three international singles: "I'm Like a Bird", "Turn Off the Light", and "...On the Radio (Remember the Days)". It received four Grammy nominations in 2002, and her debut single won for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Furtado's work was also 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". According to Maclean's magazine, Whoa, Nelly! had sold six million copies worldwide as of August 2006. Portions of the song "Scared of You" are in Portuguese, while "Onde Estás" is entirely in Portuguese, reflecting Furtado's Portuguese heritage. Following the release of the album, Furtado headlined the Burn in the Spotlight Tour and also appeared on Moby's 'lArea:One tour.
In 2002, Furtado appeared on the song "big line", on underground hip-hop group Jurassic 5's album Power in Numbers. The same year, Furtado provided her vocals to the Paul Oakenfold song "The Harder They Come" from the album Bunkka. She also had a collaboration with Colombian artist Juanes in the song "Fotografía" (Photograph), where she demonstrated her command of the Spanish language. Furtado was also featured in "Breath" from Swollen Members' Monsters in the Closet album. The video for "Breath", directed by Todd McFarlane, won Best Rap Video at the 2003 MuchMusic Video Awards, and Video of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards. In 2002, Furtado was the recipient of an International Achievement Award at the SOCAN Awards in Toronto for her song "I'm Like a Bird".
Furtado's second album, Folklore, was released in November 2003. One of the tracks on the album, "Childhood Dreams", was dedicated to her infant daughter. The album includes the single "Força", the official anthem of the UEFA Euro 2004. Furtado performed the song in Lisbon in the final of the tournament, in which Portugal's national team played. The lead single released was "Powerless (Say What You Want)" and the second single was the ballad "Try". The album was not as successful as her debut, partly due to the album's less "poppy" sound, as well as underpromotion from her label DreamWorks Records. DreamWorks had just been sold to Universal Music Group at the time of the album's release. In 2005, DreamWorks Records and many of its artists, including Furtado, were absorbed into Geffen Records. "Powerless (Say What You Want)" was later remixed into a Spanish version called "Abre Tu Corazón", featuring Juanes, who had previously worked with Furtado on his track "Fotografía". The two collaborated again on "Te Busqué" (I Searched for You), a single from Furtado's 2006 album Loose. In 2003, Furtado won an International Achievement Award at the SOCAN Awards in Toronto for her song "Turn Off the Light".
Furtado's third album, named Loose, after the spontaneous, creative decisions she made while creating the album, was released in June 2006. In this album, primarily produced by Timbaland, Furtado experiments with sounds from R&B, hip-hop, and 1980s music. Furtado herself describes the album's sound as punk-hop, described as "modern, poppy, spooky" and as having "a mysterious, after-midnight vibe... extremely visceral". She attributed the youthful sound of the album to the presence of her two-year-old daughter. The album received generally positive reviews from critics, with some citing the "revitalising" effect of Timbaland on Furtado's music, and others calling it "slick, smart and surprising".