“Say It Right” by Nelly Furtado ft. Timbaland, Saturday, May 21, 2022

After a commercially-failed sophomore record, Folklore, which was more personal to the Portuguese-Canadian pop singer than her debut record, Whoa, Nelly!, Nelly Furtado worked with producer Timbaland to go big with Loose. Furtado had tried to take her listeners on an artistic journey into her Portuguese heritage on Folklore. Loose, however, brings back the hip-hop beats and sets the formerly ascendent star back into orbit, at least for one more album. This is not to say that Furtado wasn’t artistic on her third record.
 

YOU DON’T MEAN NOTHING AT ALL TO ME. The artistic concept behind Loose is referred to in its double-entendre of a title. In Rolling Stone Furtado talked about how the production used in making the album was one of the reasons for titling it. The title also has to do with a celebration of female sexuality, Furtado bringing a sex-positive attitude in ‘06 when the noughties were heating up. Loose was an international hit, marketing different singles to different countries based on the genre of that track if it matched what was well-received in that country.  One of the biggest songs in the U.S., “Promiscuous,” wasn’t released in several countries in Europe where hip-hop tracks failed to chart. In Latin America and in Spain, “Te Basque” featuring international superstar Juanes topped the charts. In the song “No Hay Igual,” Furtado sings in Spanish and raps in Portuguese. Today’s song, “Say It Right,” though, was an international number one hit due to its rhythmic hip-hop beat, but sung, rather than rapped, lyrics. The song is based on Eurythmics’ “Here Comes the Rain Again.” Furtado, who wrote the song, claims she doesn’t know exactly what the lyrics mean to her, but rather they are based on her feeling about a time in her life.

THERE’S A HOLE IN THE PLAN. Today an Instagram video—maybe a cat dancing or something stupid—sent me on a pop nostalgia trip back to the ‘00s. In 2006, I wasn’t listening to Nelly Furtado’s comeback. It was pretty much only rock and classical at that time, and my second pop phase started in about ‘09. I think I remember seeing Nelly Furtado had come back and I shook my head, like many of her critics, that she had sold out and had gone too sexual. Furtado had been part of my first pop phase. I kind of had a crush on her and thought her first album was interesting. The DJ disc scratching in “Turn Off the Lights” reminded me of “Drive” by Incubus. A few years ago, I revisited Whoa, Nelly!  and checked out Loose as well. I didn’t think much of it until I was listening to the Labeled podcast about Underoath’s Define the Great Line and learned that Loose beat that record for the number one spot on the Billboard album charts. Underoath’s debuting at number two was a shock and a testament to how many Christian and non-Christian heavy music buyers there were at the time. Still any big production, big promotion pop record probably would have beaten the Underoath record, in this case it happened to be Nelly Furtado, of whom the podcasters said, came out nowhere with an unexpected hit record. Today’s song reminds me that there have been parallel worlds happening throughout my life. Back in ‘06 I was watching Underoath on TVU, but in 2022 I’m enjoying Loose and Underoath. It’s always fun to discover something old and think about how old you were and what you were doing when that thing came out.

Read the lyrics on Genius.