A pox on Nelly Furtado’s promiscuous schtick

The popular topic of springtime 2006 patio debate in the GTA is Nelly Furtado’s song “Promiscuous” if a feature from The Times of London is to be believed. Their visiting pop reporter conveniently overheard three fashionistas upsetting their indie chick compadre with praise for a bossa nova songstress compensating for lacklustre sales with a dialogue-based ditty containing a chorus that’s perfect for a ringtone. First discovered at a Lee’s Palace talent showcase, after flocking here from Victoria, B.C., Furtado debuted with Woah Nelly!. Packaged as a complex counterpoint to pop starlets in skimpier outfits, she complained after FHM gave her a digitially-generated navel. The relative lack of enthusiasm for the ethnomusicological approach to the follow-up album Folklore jinxed any chance of her becoming the next Joni Mitchell, especially when Nelly had a daughter out of wedlock and didn’t put her up for adoption. Yet, those female troubadours of yesteryear didn’t have the option of trading in their image for hip-hop tracks about the craving to fornicate, nor the media platform to boast of taking lessons in “how to shake my booty properly”. Grilling her about this contrived attempt to fill the spotlight during Gwen Stefani’s maternity leave, Sunday Times scribe Dan Cairns tries getting Furtado off-message before it spreads: “Push her on this and she tries the la-di-dah rictus grinning, the it’s-a-breeze nonchalance about the star-making machinery,” he writes. “And she punctuates these inquiries with a curious staccato laugh that hasn’t even a semitone of humour in it; it sounds, instead, defensive and calculating.” Those insecurities must have been reflected in her Saturday Night Live performance, too: “She needs to get deloused if she’s got that many bugs in her hair,” offered a comment on Stereogum. Furtado’s mortage payments on that $4 million Forest Hill home aren’t entirely dependent on the hoochie posturing of “Promiscuous”, though – leading up to the June 20 release of Loose, European ears are being fed her single “Maneater”, which impersonates Sri Lankan rapping demagogue M.I.A. So, if her career proves to be a model of consistency in no other way, at least Nelly Furtado can boast of three different LP covers featuring her name spelled in the identical font.