Nelly’s still keento bringus along for The Ride
She has a new album out after a five-year wait, so it seems...
Nelly Furtado didn’t plan on letting five years elapse between her previous album and the release of her latest record, but that’s what happens when you stop making plans. After a run of successful releases – including her 10million-selling 2000 debut album Whoa, Nelly! and 2006’s 13million-seller Loose – 2012’s The Spirit Indestructible was, though a fine album to these ears, neither a critical nor commercial success. It prompted the Canadian singer to have ‘a period of re-evaluation of what I wanted to do’.
‘Personally, I felt I’d been lucky enough to have a long career,’ she says.
‘I became more conscious of the passing of time and decided to do things that I felt might be good for my soul.’
Though she didn’t entertain thoughts of giving up on music, she embarked on some activities and hobbies that by her own admission were ‘quirky’.
‘I did a stint working in my friend’s vinyl record shop, took pottery and sewing classes – I did all kinds of things that people might think quirky,’ reveals the 38-year-old.
‘I also went back to university in Toronto and studied play-writing. That was a discipline that always interested me. I took a few semesters and I found it easy to fit it in. I have to say on the day first day I felt a bit bewildered walking to class with a rucksack on my back. I registered under the name Kim, so nobody really recognised me.’
It was only on the last day of the course that those who had known it was her all along, or those who came to the realisation later on, got to play a part in the big reveal.
‘Mostly they were so preoccupied with their own work in the writing class that it didn’t become an issue whether they knew or not,’ she says.
‘It was only on the very last day that I became aware who knew all along and who didn’t. I’ve made some good friends. They told me they liked my play because it was good, not because it was me.’
The play she wrote was about one of her heroes, Brazilian singer and activist Caetano Veloso, and a production of it is something she hopes to bring to fruition.
Furtado certainly has a lot on her plate at the moment. She is an ambassador for the WE charity – founded in 1995 in Toronto as Free The Children by a then 12year-old called Craig Kielburger – which aims to help children into education through projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
She also now runs her own label – and there’s also the small matter of her new album, which has been much better received than The Spirit Indestructible.
It goes by the name of The Ride, and there’s a little nod to Bill Hicks’s assertion that ‘life is just a ride and we can get off it any time’ in her explanation of the thrust of some of the songs on the album.
‘The idea of the carnival in the track Carnival Games is a metaphor for life,’ she explains.
‘You are at a carnival and you are distracted by different rides, cotton candy and all the bright flashing lights and shouts and screams. I thought that was a good metaphor for things that distract you from the important things in life. The song Tap Dancing is about when the stage lights go off and when we as performers are left with who we really are.
‘We see so many entertainers crash and burn all the time because they never know when to switch off. Palaces is about all the things that we think we need.
‘We seem to think that happiness is a mathematical equation based on all the material things that we can accumulate. I realised that’s not me. At the end of the day I’m quite a Bohemian person with a rogue spirit.’
On the occasion of a previous interview with an Irish journalist, Furtado had been made aware that ‘The Ride’ has quite a particular resonance in Irish slang and she was delighted with that.
As we are talking, she is getting made up for a performance later by her friend Colleen from Belfast, and Furtado reveals, with a loud, cackling laugh: ‘It’s a very randy title, I know. I’m sorry you’re not the first in Ireland to tell me.
‘My Irish friend Colleen thinks it’s a sexy title. Get The Ride Ireland! Re-populate the world.’
To which we say: ‘Whoa, Nelly!’ Nelly Furtado’s new album The Ride is out now on Nelstar.