Nelly Furtado Says Magazines Would ‘Lighten My Skin’ Following Rise to Stardom in the 2000s

Nelly Furtado is looking back on her rise to stardom in 2000.

After breakout hits like “I’m Like a Bird” and “Turn Off the Light,” the singer found herself front and center in magazines, which she told People involved “a lot of airbrushing.”

"I have olive skin, and they'd kind of lighten my skin a lot in photos, and kind of take my hips down all the time—they would always cut off in editorials,” she added.

Those experiences prompted her to write the song “Powerless” from her 2003 sophomore album, Folklore. She sang, “Paint my face in your magazines / Make it look whiter than it seems / Paint me over with your dreams / Shove away my ethnicity.”

While beauty standards of that era were forced on Furtado, she felt she was much more insulated from the shadier elements of the music industry than her peers—both because of her team and her mother.

"I felt so lucky and blessed. I always had such a good team around me, that was family. My team around me felt so solid and really looking out for my best interests. And I think I was just raised right. My mom was really strong, and so is her mom, and her mom, and her mom—a very matriarchal family, in general, on both sides, all my grandmothers, and great-grandmothers," Furtado said.

"So I was given a really solid kind of sense of assertiveness, I'm going to call it. So that was a good tool for me to navigate the music industry. And I was given really solid advice from a young age, luckily, from very paternal sort of people around me. So I was lucky, I was one of the lucky ones."

Beyond her support system, Furtado trusted herself and found different ways to remain true to herself when she was in the spotlight.

"I was pretty feisty, so I really knew what I wanted,” she continued. “For instance, let's say a photo shoot or something, I'd always bring my own little carry-on with my own little raver pants and tank tops and glitter, just in case I didn't like what the stylist brought to the shoot, just to make sure I was comfortable, and just blazing my own trail I guess, in my own way.

“You have to, I think. You have to kind of have that sense of self. I think it's important, to navigate the industry. You have to kind of listen to the tiny voice inside. That's really important."

Furtado released her new album 7 on Sept. 20. The offering is her seventh album and first in seven years.