Nelly Furtado Explains Plan Behind All-Spanish New Album
'Once I started writing songs in Spanish, I had a new voice,' singer says of Mi Plan.
By Jocelyn Vena
Nelly Furtado burst onto the scene almost a decade ago with her Grammy-winning hit song "I'm Like a Bird." Then she became somewhat of a pop princess in 2006 with the Timbaland-produced Loose.
Three years later, she's back and once again reinvented herself. Furtado is releasing her new album, Mi Plan, on September 15, and it's her first foray into singing solely in Spanish. Although she sang in English, Portuguese and Spanish on her past three albums, this time around she found a new voice by writing songs entirely in Spanish. The first single, "Manos al Aire" came out in June, and she feels this is just one step in her evolution into the type of artist who could happily grow old in the industry.
"I've always sung in, well, three languages for the past five years," she told MTV News about her work. "I've been singing in Portuguese and English since I was 2 years old, so I really love being a universal artist. I love being a world artist, so it's just my next step really. The Spanish project is just my next step to get to [being] 80 years old onstage, singing something. This is my next step in the puzzle."
She described this piece in her musical puzzle as being "liberating." "Mi Plan is my first album entirely in a Latin language," she said. "My past three albums have had 80 percent English and 20 percent Latin language, either Portuguese or Spanish. The fourth record is 100 percent Spanish."
Since the release of Loose three years ago, Furtado married sound engineer Demacio "Demo" Castellón and continued to raise her young daughter, Nevis. So, what else would a newlywed young mother have to sing about but love?
"The songs are all about amor. They are all about love, and it's my first album with more love songs," she explained. "They're really like songs that everybody can relate to about love and life and everyday living, just the things you go through. So basically, I found that once I started writing songs in Spanish, I had a new voice."