Nelly Furtado

About Nelly Furtado

Nelly Kim Furtado (born December 2, 1978) is a Canadian singer and songwriter. Furtado has sold over 40 million records worldwide making her one of the most successful Canadian artists. She is widely known for her musical versatility and genre experimentation.

She first gained fame with her trip hop-inspired debut album, Whoa, Nelly! (2000), which was a critical and commercial success that spawned two top-10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, "I'm Like a Bird" and "Turn Off the Light". The first of the two singles won her a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Furtado's introspective folk-heavy 2003 second album, Folklore, explored her Portuguese roots. Its singles received moderate success in Europe, but the album's underperformance compared to her debut was regarded as a sophomore slump.

Furtado's third album, Loose (2006), was a smash hit and became her bestselling album, with more than 10 million copies sold worldwide, also making it one of the bestselling albums of the 2000s. Considered a radical image reinvention, the album spawned four successful number-one singles worldwide; "Promiscuous" (featuring Timbaland), "Maneater", "Say It Right", and "All Good Things (Come to an End)". Her 2007 feature on Timbaland's "Give It to Me" in the same era also topped the charts in the US and overseas. Furtado's critically acclaimed duet with James Morrison, "Broken Strings", also topped the charts in Europe in 2008.

She released her first Spanish-language album, Mi Plan, in 2009, which won her a Latin Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Album. In 2012, Furtado released her nostalgia-inspired fifth album The Spirit Indestructible. Furtado split with her management and went independent thereafter, releasing her indie-pop sixth album, The Ride, in 2017 under her own label Nelstar Entertainment.

She has won many awards throughout her career, including one Grammy Award from seven nominations, one Latin Grammy Award, ten Juno Awards, one BRIT Award, one Billboard Music Award, one MTV Europe Music Award, one World Music Award, and three Much Music Video Awards. Furtado has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame, and was awarded Commander of the Order of Prince Henry on February 28, 2014, by Aníbal Cavaco Silva, the then-President of Portugal.

From 2001 to 2005, Furtado was in a relationship with Jasper Gahunia. Their daughter was born in September 2003. On July 19, 2008, Furtado married sound engineer Demacio Castellon, with whom she had worked on Loose. They separated in 2016. She has a daughter and son with her former partner, American rapper Jerry (Gerard Damien Long, previously known as Hodgy).

As of December 2023, she has amassed 1,000,000 followers on Instagram.