After proving her pop chops with “I’m Like a Bird” and gaining some hip-hop cred with her appearance on Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” remix, Nelly Furtado says she feels free to do “whatever the hell I want” on her next album, due by the end of 2002.
Though Furtado plans to release at least one more single from her debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, she’s already begun writing songs for its follow-up, which she’s set to start recording in the spring.
“The songs are just gonna be better,” she said recently. “For me, everyone makes a big deal out of the eclecticism of the sounds on my album, like the Brazilian, the world [music] and the hip-hop, but that comes naturally to me. What I feel is most important about record making is the actual songwriting.”
Furtado said she plans to dig deeper for material next time around and aim for “more emotional, even more raw” songs.
The success of “Get Ur Freak On” was a “career-opening” experience, she said. “It’s given me a lot of opportunities and it’s given people a lot of insight into what I’m about. In the future, I’ll able to do whatever the hell I want on my albums.”
In the meantime, Furtado is preparing to release her third single from Whoa, Nelly! “Sh- on the Radio” is a midtempo pop track with a stop-start beat not unlike that of ‘NSYNC’s “Gone.”
The song’s lyrics condemn hipsters who shy away from the mainstream. “It’s so much easier to stay down there guaranteeing you’re cool/ Than to sit up here exposing myself, trying to break through,” a multitracked Furtado sings.
Furtado promised that the song’s video, which she intends to shoot in October, is “gonna be flipping it again.”
“You’ll see me, but it’ll be different than how you usually see me,” she said. “I like all my things to be completely different – like ‘Turn Off the Light’ is completely different from ‘I’m Like a Bird.’
“‘Sh- on the Radio’ is a completely different song again, a completely different sound and it’s gonna be a completely different visual image. But it’s gonna be hardcore; it’s gonna be raw.”
In the meantime, fans can hear Furtado on the all-star version of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”.
