Nelly Furtado’s spirit now indestructible
Backstage, moments before beginning her last stadium concert, Nelly Furtado experienced a shortness of breath. She’d been on the road for a year in support of Loose, and felt a nagging suspicion that not only was she exhausted, but her music and stage show and overall everything was tired and beaten-down, too.
“I cried myself through the first moments of the show and my emotions, I had no grasp of them, and when I’m onstage, it’s a vulnerable place to be,” says Furtado, 33, wearing a snug blue jean jacket over a frilly black dress and something like one bangle bracelet for each of the 16 million records she’s sold. “It was frightening. I almost had a nervous breakdown onstage.”
Furtado, who was born in Victoria, B.C., and came of age in Toronto, has outpaced just about every other current Canadian pop star throughout the four English releases of her 12-year career. The singer, who makes dance music and sometimes releases albums in her native Portuguese, returns with The Spirit Indestructible, an album that should once again see her performing in stadiums. This time, however, she plans on keeping her emotions in check.
“I’m in my happiest, most balanced time of my life and enjoying singing, writing and the whole job. I feel inspired,” says Furtado, who wrote the bulk of The Spirit Indestructible after finishing a tour for her Grammy-winning 2009 record Mi Plan and taking an RV trip through the American South with her sevenyear-old daughter and Demacio Castellon, the sound engineer she married in 2008.
“Taking the time to decompress gave the new music a sense of purity. It feels like my first album in terms of being raw and pure and alive.”
As usual, Furtado’s music explores a wide spectrum of world music sounds. From reggae to hip-hop to Brazilian dance beats and African folk, the album leapfrogs from genre to genre, with Furtado’s voice the only constant between tunes. In the studio, Furtado says she forgets about the pop charts and focuses only on what makes her feel good.
“Writing a hit record’s the monkey on your back that you fight against. Nothing kills the spirit as quickly,” says Furtado, whose album features producers with credits on records by Justin Bieber, Amy Winehouse, Maroon 5 and Adele. “I put pressure on myself to be musically fresh, which is different from being trendy or being current. I like a fusion of sounds, just as long as it’s funky.”
The singer’s last English record was the highest-charting release of her career and nearly forced her to retire from music. On the eve of the release of her new album, which is just as catchy if not quite as stylistically radical as her work with the producer Timbaland on Loose, Furtado says this disc might be her final pop music record.
She says she doesn’t know what her next move is, but that she’s hell-bent on not repeating herself, and not sacrificing her family for work.
“I’m not a robot, I’m human,” she says. “I remember being five years old and it being like there was an orchestra in my mind and there was this soundtrack playing. I didn’t know where it was coming from, but it was there. What I’m saying is that I tried on the pop hat for a while and it was fun, but I’m ready to try new things.”