How Nelly Furtado & Dom Dolla — With Help From Drake — Made Furtado’s First New Music In Six Years

Katie Bain
·7 min read
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Nelly Furtado was already kind of an electronic music star.

The Canadian pop legend’s early aughts mega-hits had been remixed into countless DJ sets. But when a mashup of Furtado’s 2006 classic “Say It Right” and U.K. duo Bicep‘s 2017 dance world staple “Glue” made its way into the scene circa 2020, getting rinsed extensively at clubs and festivals and garnering upwards of seven million streams, the unofficial edit put Furtado on the map for a new generation of electronic fans.

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Furtado had never heard it. That changed when the singer saw her name near that of Dom Dolla’s on the lineup for Beyond The Valley 2023, an annual festival in Dolla’s hometown of Melbourne, Australia. Intrigued by the moniker and having wanted to work with a DJ on new music ideas, Furtado’s team got in contact with Dolla’s.

“I woke up one day to a message from a manager, saying, ‘Were you a fan of Nelly Furtado when you were young?'” recounts Dolla. “I was like, ‘Of course. Who wasn’t? Me and my sister were obsessed.'”

Excited, Dolla gathered beats into a Dropbox, also adding a little something special.

“When producers send a Dropbox folder, usually it’s just music,” says Furtado, “but Dom went out of his way to record a video of himself. He went, ‘Hello legend, Dom Dolla here!’ He kind of had me at that.”

The pair began passing music — including the “Say It Right” edit — back and forth over the internet, finding creative chemistry. They met IRL this past January at Beyond the Valley, where Furtado performed her first official show in five years and appeared during Dolla’s set to perform the “Say It Right” mashup live for the first time ever. It was a moment that extended into an artistic friendship that delivered the pair’s first official release, “Eat Your Man,” a club track produced by Dolla and sung by Furtado that dropped this past Friday (June 2). It marks Furtado’s first release since her 2017 LP The Ride, and puts her back into the spotlight via the strobes of clubland.

The idea for the song first came to life when the pair and their respective teams were in a studio outside of Philadelphia working on music ideas for Furtado. “We were in the car on the way to the studio one day,” says Dolla, “and she turns around to me and goes, ‘I’d really like to feature on a Dom Dolla club record.'”

Dolla was slightly dumbstruck by the ask — but collected himself, and during that same drive, played Furtado instrumentals he’d been tinkering on. “I felt like her sound, especially her sort of upbeat, chest voice rap tone from ‘Promiscuous’ and ‘Maneater’ would work really well on a house record on the club,” he says.

He was right, with “Eat Your Man” evoking these classics both tonally and lyrically as Furtado spits, “I’ll eat your man, devour him whole … fly like a bird, I’m taking it home, moving my body like a nympho,” over the propulsive, darkly thumping production.

The track was made during a few extended studio sessions in Philly, where roll call included Jim Beanz, the vocal producer who worked with Furtado on tracks like “Maneater,” “Say It Right” and “Promiscuous.” (Beanz also did backing vocals on these tracks, which were famously produced by Timbaland.)

‘I said, ‘I love the way that you perform the rap part on ‘Promiscuous Girl’ and the vocal parts on ‘Maneater,'” says Dolla, “and Jim goes, ‘Oh, I remember the settings for exactly how I did that.” The crew spent the better part of a day recording and layering Furtado’s voice to get it to sound as close to this old stuff as possible, ultimately piling on six layers of vocals for “Eat Your Man.”

“I think I was 16 when I was first set foot in a vocal booth,” says Furtado. “I remember enjoying the sound of my own voice in there, and I actually forgot that feeling until I worked with Dom. I was like, ‘Holy s–t. It’s so simple. You just have to enjoy the sound of your own f—ing voice and melt into it.'”

For Dolla, the experience also had novelty, with the group collaboration providing starkly different creative process from the lone wolf nature of dance music production. (Dolla typically produces tracks on his headphones while sitting on the couch of whatever given Airbnb he’s staying at on tour.) Dolla has become increasingly visible in the dance world leader over the past few years, playing high profile gigs including a headlining show and Red Rocks and, along with artists like John Summit and Chris Lake, propelling a hard-hitting but also totally fun and palatable strain of house/tech house that’s become the mainstream scene’s prevailing sound in the last half decade. (Dolla has had four tracks hit Hot Dance/Electronic Songs since 2019, with his biggest song, the MK collab “Rhyme Dust,” debuting at No. 9 on the chart this past March and currently sitting at No. 24. This summer he’s performing dates including Lollapalooza, Tomorrlwand and club Space in Miami.)

But unlike the EDM it supplanted, this type of house hasn’t experienced the type of crossover success that hits of the EDM era seemed to score so easily. That era’s A-list crossover collabs — Calvin Harris and Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” Jack Ü and Justin Bieber’s “Where Are U Now” — helped give dance music a Hot 100 and top 40 presence. While those types of hits now happen infrequently, “Eat Your Man” demonstrates both a prevailing sound of modern dance music and a moment where big time pop stars are once again entering the club.

Incredibly, none of this might have happened if not for Drake.

“We had some really cool conversations about music and life and art, and he kind of just blew up my head and was like, ‘You know, you really need to make new music, and these are all the reasons why,'” Furtado recalls of meeting the rapper and fellow Toronto native. “He was like, ‘You need to boss up when it comes to your career.’ I got really inspired and I started hitting it a lot harder. It was like added fuel to the flame, you know?”

Drake even helped Furtado boss up when he invited her to perform at OVO festival in July of 2022. “I was literally at the zoo with my three and four year old [kids], and didn’t even know if I was going to [play] until like, 7:00 p.m.,” Furtado says. “Then I did it, and it was like, ‘Oh s–t, I forgot what I do for a living. This is what I do.”

(“This next person’s music changed my life so much. I love her with all my heart, so when she comes out here you better show her some f–king love too,” Drake said while presenting Furtado during the show — as the opening beats of “Promiscuous” played and the crowd went wild and proceeded to scream along to every word.)

This Furtado fervor is also something Dolla has experienced, with “Eat Your Man” having generated a major response from the dance music community. “It was really fun seeing the comments of people going, ‘DJs have been remixing her for the last 15 years and Dom’s managed to get her in the studio.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know how the hell that’s happened either.'”

The pair — who are both on the lineup for San Francisco’s Portola festival this fall — agree that there’s some sort of cyclical kismet involved, with Dolla attesting that listening to Furtado’s music when he was a kid likely rubbed off on him, subconsciously influenced his music and has now “come full circle where she kind of hears herself in it.”

“I was like, ‘That’s really trippy,'” says Furtado. “It’s very meta. That’s the wave we’re on.”

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