What About Nelly Furtado?
The staying power of Loose
Last month, inspired by Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’ La Culturista’s podcast, I wrote a post where I listed my Top 10 Moments of Culture. At number 5, the collaborations of Nelly Furtado and Timbaland are featured, as their music defined the mid-2000s.
It got me to thinking - what happened to Nelly Furtado, and why don’t we talk about her more?
I actually began envisioning this post over a year ago in the midst of quarantine, while taking a walk on the beach listening to Say It Right on repeat. That song is just so good. Also as of recent, Maneater has been making the rounds on TikTok. You could say that Nelly Furtado’s occupied space in my mind for some time now.
In the early-to-mid 2000s era of pop and R&B music, artists like Beyoncé, Rihanna, J. Lo, Alicia Keys, etc. come to mind, and deservedly so. But it feels as if we’ve left one artist notably out of the line-up - Nelly Furtado.
Throughout her career, she’s released an impressive six albums. Her debut album titled Whoa, Nelly! (incredible name) featured Grammy award-winning song I’m Like A Bird. To be totally transparent, I strongly disliked that song. I re-listened to it for this post, and I still couldn’t quite get through it. But similar to Life is a Highway, I will belt out every word of it given the opportunity to sing it at a crowded bar with friends. My opinions aside, it was one of the most successful and popular singles of 2001.
Then 2006 happened with the release of Loose.
“Am I throwing you off?”
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so.”
We knew it was about to *go down* when we heard these lyrics blare from our boom boxes.
Her third studio album featured hits like Promiscuous, Maneater, Say It Right and All Good Things (Come To An End). Executively produced by Timbaland, the album presented a liberated and grittier Nelly. And when she and Timbaland worked together on the album, it was music magic (Fader has a great article detailing more of their collaboration).
The word “promiscuous” was introduced to millions of grade school children, and although I had been attending Catholic school for nearly a decade at this point, that word was not yet in my vocabulary (catechism, kyrie eleison, and excommunication were however). Maneater featured the “not-exactly-talking-but-not-singing-but-not-rapping” style of music that was popular around this time (similar to that of Fergie’s Glamorous and Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl). Simply put, Loose encompassed the sound and style of the mid-aughts.
So where is Nelly Furtado now?
After Loose, she released albums Mi Plan (2009), The Spirit Indestructible (2012) and The Ride (2017). These albums didn’t achieve the same level of commercial success as Loose, and we haven’t heard much from her for several years now. While she is on Instagram, there are only two posts, one of which celebrates the 15-year anniversary of Loose. She also revealed in an interview that she suffered a nervous breakdown while performing on stage and experienced extreme burn-out.
It goes without saying that the popularity of musicians comes and goes. And while we as a society measure the success and worth of an artist based on sales and charts, it certainly doesn’t define their artistic worth, value or talent (do you hear that music business man?!). While she might not have had a similar success to that of Loose, she has created and released an abundance of work throughout her life. It’s possible she just wanted to chill out after spending years in the ‘biz - who wouldn’t want to? It appears that currently she’s still writing music, doing charity work and spending time with family.
I’m not sure why I’m getting so defensive over career; I think it’s largely in part that I re-appreciating her work and hope others do that same.
Above all, I hope she’s happy. Thank you for giving us Loose!