NELLY FURTADO
Loose
Universal
· The name Loose has more to do with Furtado’s musical vision than, well, you know.
After listening to Nelly Furtado’s third album, Loose, it would be easy to say that she’s sold out, but that’s not necessarily true. The album is strictly R&B, more akin to Rihanna than the guitar-playing folkies Furtado used to be associated with. However, Furtado has always had an undercurrent of R&B and hip hop in her music – this is just the first time she’s embraced it to this extent. A few years back, she appeared on a Missy Elliott remix and then got Timbaland to remix her hit "Turn off the Light." So, she hasn’t ventured far from her roots, especially considering that Timbaland produces 10 of Loose’s 13 tracks.
While Loose isn’t a "sellout" album per se, it is suspect for other reasons – most notably for being entirely forgettable. Furtado’s coy singing voice, which has always been her greatest strength, gets lost behind Timbaland’s larger-than-life beats, making the wrong person the star of the album. Loose is far more a showcase for Timbaland as a producer than it is for Furtado as an R&B star. Tracks like "Maneater" and "Promiscuous" have the kind of motion-sickness-inducing beats that we’ve come to expect from him, but they could be sung by any of today’s B-list divas and the tracks would sound exactly the same.
Loose isn’t a good album, but it makes a lot more sense than her last transformation. After her stunning pop debut Whoa, Nelly!, Furtado released Folklore, essentially a Portuguese folk album. In retrospect, that should’ve been career suicide, and it certainly didn’t sell nearly as many copies as her first. Loose should re-establish Furtado as a force to be reckoned with on the charts, but, unfortunately, her credibility may never recover.
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