Nelly Furtado
Folklore

THE REVIEW

Dark shadows stretched over my fingers, which were violently attacking the keyboard of my white laptop. The fingertips bounced insistently from a "t" to a "g" with the strong and powerful sound of when a metal rod is struck in reverse.
"What do you want? Sky demons! Let me write in peace," I said smiling and happy, but also anguished with my heart suspended between terror and euphoria.

"Stop writing, Davide! You're an idiot, that's what you are!"
"But go away! Outcasts! You are shadows because you haven't lived life intensely, that's why!"
"We're just trying to give you some advice. You're crazy. By now, your sense of responsibility has hung a noose around your intestine and there it surrendered with suffocating death."

"What on earth are you saying?"

"How can you review Nelly Furtado? You're insane. You listen to music erratically. You switch from Naked City to Michelle Branch like it's nothing, Masonna and then Nelly Furtado, Diamanda Galas and Jewel. You deserve life imprisonment or at least an alcoholic coma."

"But let me write, for heaven's sake! I need to breathe, concentrate, taste that charming grace, fill my mouth with strawberries, polish myself a little, and understand. I need to find the essence in everything. If you don't understand my so-called 'erratic' behavior, then go to hell. And that's it. Now I need to talk about the album."

I pulled out "Folklore" from my endless shelf of music CDs, carefully placed behind Galas's "Schrei X" and started thinking about how, once upon a time, this doe-eyed girl might have moved me. I didn't remember. The fact is, I was, and still am, totally sure that she was one of the most interesting realities in mainstream pop. Her music was fresh pop, with surges of folk and urban and electronic sounds, and that hint of tradition that made everything fascinatingly magical. And stop saying she couldn't do anything. Admit that Nelly, even if you don't like her, is still one of the most talented and fresh pop stars of the blatantly mainstream pop. Sure, the disappointment was total in front of that "Loose," so electronic, so little folkloric, and so trendy, destined to die like all trends. And even more disappointment in front of her new song, whose title escapes me: a return to folk but lacking that fierce and sweet soul at the same time that characterized "Whoa Nelly!" and especially "Folklore."

"Folklore," indeed. Perhaps not the most memorable album, but undoubtedly successful. Pleasant, engaging and vaguely poetic.
It's pop, simple pop, but not stupid, quite the contrary. Here Nelly surpasses herself, giving her all in effective songs that manage to cleverly combine contemporary elements—almost lysergic rhythm and strongly and electronically destructive—and those of the distant past—strings, folk guitars, banjos, and ukuleles ("Powerless", "Força"), realizing a tremendously successful and impactful blend by achieving the goal of creating 'radio' melodies while simultaneously breaking free from the standards of today's trash, escaping any mediocre premises and finalizing her genuineness with a simplicity almost foreign to our frantic Western society. 

And then there's "Try", the anthem of love and life, so painful and delicate and falsely clever, supported by an almost imperceptible music box and intertwining acoustic guitars ready to envelop the heart with an almost painful and virginal impulse. And "One Trick Pony", rhythmic and Caribbean towards an endless sunset. An endless summer. 

A warm, seductive album, head and shoulders above the new fake divas who are more inclined towards image (look at Lady Gaga: a complete failure both musically and physically speaking, yet so trendy and glossy as to have direct appeal) that now invade us, following each other at an unapproachable pace.

It's too easy to say "Folklore" sucks. Too conforming to the mass ideal of prejudice. Too much, period.

It's only pop but we (I) like it. 

De gustibus.