Saturday, July 21, 2012

Nelly Furtado - The come-back

Six years after the planetary (and commerical) success of Loose, Miss Furtado is planning her come-back on the mainstream pop english-spoken music scene. She just released, one after the other, two singles Big Hoops (the bigger the better) and Spirit Indestructible, that anticipate her 5th studio album: The Spirit Indestructible.
Many voices, and I have to agree with them (at least by listening at the two anticipating tracks), associate The Spirit Indestructible to the sound and atmospheres of Nelly's previous EPs Whoa! Nelly and Loose itself. But let's proceed with order.

Let's start with Big Hoops. For this track the canadian-portuguese lady counted on the help of Mr. Rodney Jerkins, producer of stars like MJ, Whitney and sweet Spice Girls. The track is definetely a pop song, characterized with hip hop veins. It starts and proceed with Nelly's Auto-tuned voice singing on nice and keen percussions. Rhythm mainly based on Furtado's song proceed until she declares in the lyrics "I thought this song was over\ Nope, it ain't over yet". All of a sudden the track disguises into 40 seconds of hard drum'n'bass. Nice song. But it kinda reminds me of On the Radio from the good old days of Whoa! Nelly.

Spirit Indestructible starts with Renaissance-style keys. When the song picks up its true rhythm, with lasery beats and drums, NF voice is kinda overwhelmed by the music. Despite lyrics contains a very positive message, about the true strenght of spirit, the whole songs remains not so convincing. In fact, @ mid-song, Miss Furtado falls into a chant of the 5 vowels “A-E-I-O-U”, definetely not coherent with the whole song’s message. I'd say that Spirit Indestructible dancy atmoshperes bonk with Say It Right beats (is it just me or the track are almost the same?!).

I really don't know what to expect from the last effort of NF, which will be available starting from September. Fingers crossed. In the meantime enjoy the wader Furtado in Big Hoops.