Cupla folklore

Diva alert! Shortly before your hotpress correspondent is admitted to Nelly Furtado’s swish London hotel suite, one of her record company aides takes me aside and lays down the interview ground rules: “She says that she really only wants to talk about the new album, so just one baby question, please.”

When I meet her, though, the decidedly friendly and down-to-earth 23-year-old Canadian singer seems none too bothered. Wearing a black tour jacket with her name emblazoned in gold lettering on the front (“It’s a long story,” she giggles, embarrassed, “I swear I don’t normally wear my own merchandise”), Furtado immediately volunteers the information that her two-month old daughter has only just gone to sleep. Deciding to use up my baby question immediately, I ask the child’s name.
“It’s Nevis,” she beams. “From the Latin word for ‘snow’.”
“Oh right – like Ben Nevis,” I say.
“Who?” she queries, eyebrows raised.
“You know, in Scotland.”
“Ben Nevis? Is he a football player?”
“No – he’s a mountain!”
“A mountain?”
“Em, yes – a mountain in Scotland.”
Furtado cutely furrows her brow and smilingly absorbs this information. “Oh, it’s a mountain! Right, there’s a mountain in Scotland called Ben Nevis. Now I get it!” She convulses with laughter. “Sorry, I’m a little slow today.”
Laughing is something the bubbly Furtado seems to do a lot. It’s hardly surprising – she has much to be happy about. Nevis isn’t the only new baby she’s brought into the world recently. Her highly anticipated second album Folklore – the follow-up to her multi-platinum, Grammy-winning 2000 debut Whoa Nelly! – is due for release at the end of the month.
Recorded between LA and her native Toronto, and written and produced with her production team Track & Field [Gerald Eaton and Brian West], it’s an eclectic but smooth-flowing fusion of hip-hop, pop, soul, folk, Latin dance and Portugese fado. Although hardly a departure from the equally energising Whoa Nelly!, the singer herself reckons it’s a much more mature work.
“I think I’ve grown a lot,” she says. “A lot of the songs on my first album, I was a teenager still. But this was very different. I was in a different state of mind. My first album was my first recording ever. And even Track & Field, it was their first production gig. So we were all very slow and clunky. But this record was all written, recorded, produced and mixed in 12 weeks.”
I presume you were pregnant while you were recording?
“Yeah, it was in the tail end of my pregnancy. And it was really fun, I was in a really great state of mind.”
No wild mood swings then?
“Nah!” she laughs. “It was just a really good emotional place. I dunno, it makes you really reflective. I was very calm and happy and so the music seemed to be really easy and light, more like an afterthought. So we approached the album that way.”
As its title implies, the album sees her continuing her explorations of her musical heritage and ancestry (her parents immigrated to Canada from the Azores). At one point, she even sings in Portuguese.
“I always thought of my first record as an introduction to me as a person and, if anything, it kind of professed a lot of my individuality. It was saying be strong as a person in who you are. I think that’s where all politics begins. When you feel strong enough as a person you can go forth and say what you don’t like about the world and go and try to change it. And this album is a lot more direct. I talk about my culture, my roots and my heritage. And I think you have to deal with all of those things before you move onto other things.”
She’s certainly a lot more forthright lyrically this time out, as a listen to sassy first cut ‘Powerless (Say What You Want)’ will confirm.
“The world culture has become quite consumerist,” she reflects. “Everybody feels that they have to buy stuff in order to feel happy. It’s funny when you think about it. But it’s easier to just not think about it and buy into it, which is what I do every day. And everyone does. But ‘Powerless’ kinda talks about it a little. About all those things. Also a lot of people don’t take part or care about the world because it’s too difficult to. They’d rather just ride along and have fun with their lives and not have to think about all that stuff. But I think ‘Powerless’ talks a little bit about how you can still be intelligent about the world and still bob your head to it and dance and have fun.
“I’m a thinker, you know,” she continues. “I like to think about things a lot. I don’t really lead a spiritually ignorant life. I wish I did. I envy blissfully ignorant people.”
Speaking of same, with today being the day of George Jnr’s arrival into London, I ask her if she’s planning on joining the mass demonstration later.
“I think that’s so interesting. I heard a little snippet of Michael Moore talking on the radio about it. I kind of wish I was free so I could go down there and check it out – and maybe take part.
“I think closed-mindedness is the root of all evil. Everybody’s so attached to their doctrines, that’s what’s causing the problems. If everyone was a little more open-minded, a little more diverse and a little bit less scared and less clingy to everything, then we could all move forward a little bit. So that’s what I try to do. I’m myself and I’m lucky I grew up that way. I grew up seeing the world with a really wide scope. And I feel like I belong to the world and not just one place.”
Having spent much of the last three years riding the Whoa Nelly! tsunami and touring incessantly with everybody from Moby to U2 (not to mention having babies and recording albums), she’s planning on taking it easy on the live front for a while. She’s in the UK for press interviews and a couple of TV appearances, but won’t be touring Folklore until next summer. However, she’s taking motherhood in her stride and doesn’t see it as any impediment to her musical career.
“It’s a really good balance, because now I’ve got this family to come home to when I finish work. It’s funny because when I was a teenager I thought I wanted to start a family in my thirties, but I think with the music – because it matures you at light speed – I think you notice that a lot of people in the business start having families earlier. It puts you in high pressure situations where you learn how capable you really are. And it makes you feel strong enough to be a mother.”
Whoa Nelly! But there’s no stopping her… b

Folklore is out now on Dreamworks