Nelly Furtado: Stories behind hits

In the decade since Nelly Furtado first came to public attention with “I'm Like a Bird”, the Canadian songstress has dabbled in pop, folk, hip-hop, electronica, dance and world music.
“I've definitely confused people,” the singer laughs, “but I guess that's part of what I do.”
“I've always listened to a really broad spectrum of music, from British rock bands to Canadian folk music to Brazilian samba music, it's all stuff that turns me on.
“The one unifying thread is, clearly, I'm a pop singer and pop songwriter and melody, lyrics are central to what I do.”
Furtado concedes that the scattershot approach means she has had to “find a new fanbase with every record”, but it seems to have worked.
“Loose”, her collaboration with hip-hop producer Timbaland, went platinum in 32 countries. The follow-up, a Spanish language disc called “Mi Plan”, may have seemed like career suicide -- but it won a Grammy and topped the Latin album charts.
“My goal is to always record albums where pretty much every song sounds just as good with only an acoustic guitar and a vocal,” Furtado explains.
As she releases her first greatest hits compilation, the singer-songwriter talked about the stories behind her biggest songs.
The song that means most to me
“Try”, which is a ballad from the second album, “Folklore”. I was about six months pregnant with Nevis my daughter at the time. So that album has a lot of sincere, emotionally poignant moments for me. I was really inspired.
The second half of the song was totally improvisation. It captured a lot of emotion. So every time I sing it in my live show -- all around the world it's had the same reaction -- fans get quite emotional, and there's a lot of crying.
The song that started a fire
This is true -- there are many witnesses who were there: When we recorded “Maneater”, a speaker caught fire. It started smoking and a flame shot out of the speaker, which nobody at the Hit Factory in Miami had ever seen before in the 40 years the studio has been there.
The song that was more successful than i expected
“Say It Right”. I had no idea what a giant song it would become. The thing that still perplexes me about the song is that I still can't put into words what it's about. I think it's maybe about personal, visceral abandon. Throwing yourself into something without inhibitions.
Timbaland and I wrote it really late at night. It was four in the morning and it just kind of came out of nowhere. We'd been watching Pink Floyd's “The Wall” on a huge screen all day long on mute -- so I think it was playing into our subconscious a little bit.
The song i love playing in concert
“Turn Off the Light”. We've done electro versions, hip-hop versions. Timbaland came and surprised people when we played it at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. We did my regular version, then it was Tim's urban remix, and then we rapped, and then we went into a heavy metal ending, where I played guitar and traded licks with my guitar player. It just got rowdy, and the crowd would really move and jump in that part.
It's a great festival song, too. I played it at Glastonbury and people jumped and moved. It's got a lot of groove potential, so if you want that, you can really get it going on that song.
The song that didn't make it onto the greatest hits
I really wanted the “Get Ur Freak On” remix I did with Missy Elliot. That was really important for my career, because it opened the whole hip-hop world to me, right after “I'm Like a Bird” came out. So there was a cool duality going on.
There's a funny story behind it, too. People would play that remix on the seriously urban, street radio stations in New York and the DJs said: “Oh, Missy's done a duet with a Jamaican boy.”
I also wanted my duet with Michael Buble, “Quando Quando Quando”. It's like my jazz tune. The duet with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake [“Give it to Me”] isn't on there, either. And I have a really cool duet with Josh Groban. We wanted to do a collaborations album for a while, because I've done so many -- and I'm still doing more. I'm not in a band but I have a thirst and a desire to be around musicians.
Compiled by Correspondent