It's Always Nice To See A Nelly Getting Ahead

Whilst I was still toiling in the CD mines at Sam the Record Man late in the year 2000, a fresh-faced young Canadian released an album entitled Whoa, Nelly!; I'd like to say I predicted her eventual superstardom as I have done with so many others, but I did not.

The best place to become cynical about the music industry is a record store; there you discover brilliant talents with no backing from their label foundering at the bottom of the remainder bin, and no-talent hacks whose publicity costs more than their recording who nonetheless continue to spew their middle-of-the-road dreck directly into the marketplace and all the way to the top of the charts.

Not that I'm bitter...

Furtado's first album was so big, and yet her second album Folklore such a low-key affair, that by the normal measure of things should have meant her third album was rushed into stores and forgotten... Followed six months later by a 'greatest hits' compilation, a tour of suburban shopping malls, and the rest of her career spent singing I'm like a Bird for anyone who asked, bearing the dreaded stigma of a one-hit wonder and occasionally featuring on those 'Where Are They Now' segments favoured by such celebrity reacharound programs as Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood.

Again - not that I'm bitter.

Nelly Furtado, however, confounded all expectations by following her second album with a smash-hit third album, entitled Loose, after which her enduring stardom looks like a fait accompli*. And all this before her 32nd birthday, which is today. Whoa Nelly? More like Go Nelly! In fact, I can't think of any better advice than that...

*A Spanish language album entitled Mi Plan was followed by The Best of Nelly Furtado in November 2010; a fourth studio album - tentatively called Lifestyle - will hopefully appear one of these days.
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