1. Nelly Furtado has sold over 45 million records, including 35 million in album sales worldwide, making her one of the most successful Canadian artists.
72 Facts About Nelly Furtado
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Nelly Furtado's critically acclaimed duet with James Morrison, "Broken Strings", topped the charts in Europe in 2008.
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Nelly Furtado released her first Spanish-language album, Mi Plan, in 2009, which won her a Latin Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Album.
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In 2012, Nelly Furtado released her nostalgia-inspired fifth album The Spirit Indestructible.
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Nelly Furtado 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.
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Nelly 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 Anibal Cavaco Silva, the then-President of Portugal.
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Nelly Furtado was born on December 2,1978, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
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Nelly Furtado's Portuguese parents, Antonio Jose Furtado and Maria Manuela Furtado, were born on Sao Miguel Island in the Azores and had immigrated to Canada in the late 1960s.
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Nelly Furtado began playing musical instruments at the age of nine, learning the trombone, ukulele and, in later years, the guitar and keyboards.
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Nelly Furtado has acknowledged her family as the source of her strong work ethic; she spent eight summers working as a chambermaid with her mother, along with her brother and sister, who was a housekeeper in Victoria.
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Nelly Furtado contributed vocals to their 1996 album, Join the Ranks, on the track "Waitin' 4 the Streets".
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Ultimately, Nelly Furtado felt the trip hop style of the duo was "too segregated", and believed it did not represent her personality or allow her to showcase her vocal ability.
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Nelly Furtado left the group and planned to move back home.
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Nelly Furtado's performance attracted the attention of The Philosopher Kings singer Gerald Eaton, who then approached her to write with him.
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Nelly Furtado left Toronto, but returned again to record more material with Eaton and West.
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Nelly Furtado's work was critically acclaimed for her innovative mixture of various genres and sounds.
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In 2002, Nelly Furtado appeared on the song "Thin Line", on underground hip hop group Jurassic 5's album Power in Numbers.
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Nelly Furtado had a collaboration with Colombian artist Juanes in the song "Fotografia", where she showed her diversity of yet another language, Spanish.
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Nelly Furtado was featured in "Breath" from Swollen Members' Monsters in the Closet release; the video for "Breath", directed by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, won the 2003 Western Canadian Music Awards Outstanding Video and MuchVIBE Best Rap Video.
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In 2002, Nelly Furtado was the recipient of an International Achievement Award at the SOCAN Awards in Toronto for her song "I'm Like a Bird".
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Nelly Furtado performed the song in Lisbon in the final of the tournament, in which Portugal's national team played.
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In 2003, Nelly Furtado won an International Achievement Award at the SOCAN Awards in Toronto for her song "Turn Off the Light".
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Nelly Furtado attributed the youthful sound of the album to the presence of her two-year-old daughter.
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On February 16,2007, Nelly Furtado embarked on the "Get Loose Tour".
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Nelly Furtado returned in March 2007 to her hometown of Victoria to perform a concert at the Save-On Foods Memorial Centre.
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Nelly Furtado won all five awards for which she was nominated, including Album of the Year and Single of the Year.
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In late 2008, Nelly Furtado collaborated with James Morrison on a song called "Broken Strings" for his album Songs for You, Truths for Me.
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Nelly Furtado married Cuban sound engineer Demacio "Demo" Castellon, with whom she had worked on the Loose album, on July 19,2008.
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Nelly Furtado had formed her own record label, Nelstar, in conjunction with Canadian independent label group Last Gang Labels.
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Nelly Furtado won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Album for Mi Plan.
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Nelly Furtado is the first Portuguese-Canadian to win a Latin Grammy award.
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Nelly Furtado participated in the live DVD recording of the Brazilian singer Ivete Sangalo in Madison Square Garden on September 4,2010.
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Nelly Furtado released Mi Plan Remixes featuring 12 tracks of remixed hits from Mi Plan.
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Nelly Furtado made a guest appearance on Tiesto's single "Who Wants to Be Alone" on his new album Kaleidoscope.
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Nelly Furtado sang in a duet with Bryan Adams at the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games.
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Nelly Furtado participated in the Young Artists for Haiti song, in which many Canadian artists came together and sang K'naan's song "Wavin' Flag" to raise money for the victims of the Haiti earthquake.
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Nelly Furtado was honoured with a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in October 2010.
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Nelly Furtado had previously sung two of the new songs: "Girlfriend in the City" and "Night Is Young" at her concert in Warsaw, Poland.
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Nelly Furtado came under fire after 2011 reports from the New York Times and a WikiLeaks document revealed she had accepted payment of one million dollars to perform for the family of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi.
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Nelly Furtado publicly endorsed Green Party leader Elizabeth May in Saanich-Gulf Islands during the federal election in 2011.
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Nelly Furtado collaborated with recording artist Alex Cuba and K'naan again.
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Nelly Furtado continued to collaborate with hip-hop producer Salaam Remi, who previously worked on the 2010 single "Night Is Young", on "The Edge".
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Nelly Furtado promoted the album on her The Spirit Indestructible Tour.
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In February 2015, Nelly Furtado co-headlined Switzerlands Art on Ice tour with Tom Odell.
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In 2016, Nelly Furtado appeared in a minor supporting role in the romantic comedy film A Date with Miss Fortune.
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On February 14,2016, Nelly Furtado performed the Canadian national anthem at the 2016 NBA All-Star Game, which was held in Toronto.
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In 2016, Nelly Furtado collaborated with Dev Hynes on the track "Hadron Collider".
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In July 2016, Nelly Furtado released "Behind Your Back" exclusively on Spotify, describing the song as an "appetiser" for her next album.
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On September 8,2016, Nelly Furtado confirmed the title of the upcoming album, The Ride, which was released in March 2017.
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In May 2021, Nelly Furtado collaborated with German duo Quarterhead on a remix of her song "All Good Things ".
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In June 2021, Nelly Furtado celebrated the 15th anniversary of her third studio album Loose by releasing an expanded edition of 32 tracks to digital and streaming platforms.
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In July 2022, after a five-year performing hiatus, Nelly Furtado joined Drake on stage for the latter's October World Weekend concert in Toronto, where they performed "Promiscuous" and "I'm Like a Bird".
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Nelly Furtado has reported being working on new music via her Instagram stories.
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On December 31,2022, five years after her last concert in Baloise Session in Basel, Switzerland, Nelly Furtado performed live at the Beyond The Valley Festival in Australia.
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Nelly Furtado collaborated with Australian DJ and producer Dom Dolla on the song "Eat Your Man", that was released on June 2,2023, her first single release after five years.
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Nelly Furtado confirmed club bangers would be expected on her new material, as well as ballads.
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On May 8,2024, Nelly Furtado announced via Instagram the release of a new single, "Love Bites", featuring Swedish singer Tove Lo and British DJ SG Lewis, which will be released on May 22,2024.
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On July 5,2024, Nelly Furtado announced via Instagram the release of "Corazon" as a single, more than a year after singing it for the first time in Monterrey, Mexico.
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On Christmas Day 2024,25 December, Nelly Furtado released a remixed version of "Showstopper" as the album's next single; this version featured British rapper AJ Tracey.
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Nelly Furtado has appeared on the cover of numerous international lifestyle and fashion magazines, including Canada's Flare and Elle; Russia's Elle Girl; Hungary's Shape; Portugal's Vogue; Germany's Maxim; and US' Teen People, Vanidades and YM.
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Nelly Furtado has appeared on the cover of several international editions of Cosmopolitan.
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Nelly Furtado was voted one of the "Fun and Fearless Females" by Cosmopolitan in 2002.
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In October 2023, Nelly Furtado appeared in Kim Kardashian's shapewear brand Skims' campaign alongside other celebrities, including Kim Cattrall, Lana Condor, Coco Jones and Hari Nef.
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In September 2003, Nelly Furtado gave birth to a daughter with her then boyfriend Jasper Gahunia.
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On July 19,2008, Nelly Furtado married sound engineer Demacio Castellon, with whom she had worked on Loose.
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In December 2021, Nelly Furtado revealed on her Instagram account that she has two more children, the oldest being a girl and the youngest being a boy, as she revealed in July 2023 during an interview with Vogue where she revealed she is single again.
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In November 2006, Nelly Furtado revealed that she once turned down US$500,000 to pose fully clothed in Playboy.
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Nelly Furtado studied Spanish in high school and in 2009 estimated that her command of it was fifty to sixty percent.
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In May 2023, during an interview with Fault magazine, Nelly Furtado revealed she had recently been diagnosed with ADHD.
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In 2007, Nelly Furtado hosted a program about AIDS on MTV, which featured guests Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys.
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On September 27,2011, Nelly Furtado announced during Free the Children's We Day, that she was giving CDN$1,000,000 to Free the Children's effort to build girls' schools in the Maasai region of Kenya.
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Nelly Furtado is a member of the Canadian charity Artists Against Racism.