WORLDLY WOMAN: “I’m embracing the idea of being an entertainer a lot more now,” says Furtado. “And I feel really sexy as a woman and in control of my life.” |
Performing her #1 single “Promiscuous” on Saturday Night Live, Nelly Furtado shook and shuddered her pint-sized body like an electro-shocked puppet. Up there with her was producer/rapper Timbaland, who glided across the stage fronting a monster-sized hip-hop band. Nelly sprang her limbs with spastic intent, shaking her arms like a wet bird, thrusting her hips in Shakira-like gyrations, and generally fulfilling her role as an “empowered woman.”
The 2000 multi-platinum smash Whoa, Nelly! (DreamWorks) put the Portuguese-bred British Columbian singer on the map with “I’m like a Bird” (and its accompanying mud-romping video), but her new third album, Loose (Geffen), celebrates the emancipation of Nelly Furtado. This 29-year-old musical chameleon is an astute global pop star, whether she’s crooning ballads with Latin superstar Juanes (“Te Busques”), swinging sambas with Michael Buble (2005’s “Quando, Quando, Quando”), collaborating with Missy Elliott (“Get Ur Freak On”), penning an acoustic Christmas album (it’ll include a cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”), or organizing an artists’ collective with her new hero, Timothy “Timbaland” Mosley. “Timbaland really brought out the more primal and impulsive side of me,” she says from her LA management offices. “And also my more sexual side. I really let go in the studio. Somebody said that Loose is very hedonistic, and I don’t argue with that. It was made in the spirit of fun and leisure.”
Recorded in Miami by Timbaland (and producers Lester Mendez and Rick Nowels) after initial sessions with Nellie Hooper, Scott Storch, and the Neptunes’ Pharrell Williams largely failed, Loose finds Furtado following the lead of other white females who’ve assumed hip-hop’s mass-culture mantle to generate record sales well beyond their previous releases. For Nelly, crossing over came as easily as getting a tan. “I was in Miami and on vacation besides being in the studio. I was with my daughter Nevis hanging out in the sun. It was a leisurely sort of experience, and I let my guard down. I felt very comfortable in my own skin. As a young Latin or Portuguese woman and as someone who speaks Spanish, I felt incredibly at home and welcome in Miami. Over the past couple years I have gone through some changes, giving birth and becoming a mother; now I feel really in control of my life and really empowered. I feel really good about myself. A natural sexiness comes out of that.”
Loose’s cover and liner art looks sexy: the diminutive singer does her best open-mouthed pout while posing in various diva-inspired, sex-bomb moves. The close-up head shot beneath the CD tray posits her as the universal woman, her clear-eyed gaze cast far into space, the future, and beyond.
Furtado’s last single, “Maneater,” dominated the Top Five throughout Europe, but “Promiscuous” has already bulleted the very top of Billboard’s Hot Digital Songs, iTunes, AOL, and Yahoo. And with a tie-in to the current Verizon ad campaign already signed, she can afford to sound satisfied. “I love to keep myself entertained. I have an extremely low attention span. I can write amazing songs with amazing artists and co-writers, which is what I was doing last year. Then I flew to Miami on that fateful day to work with Timbaland for supposedly just one up-tempo song. When I got there, I felt like I had struck creative gold. Timbaland and I were extremely on the same wavelength, almost like an alchemy of sorts going on. It was very strange.
