Nelly Furtado revealed this week that she has ADHD amid a comeback to recording and performing music.
The Canadian pop star said she was only diagnosed 18 months ago. And staying busy with music and dance has helped her along the way.
“I believe I’ve had it my whole life, but playing instruments six days a week as a kid kept me in check,” Furtado said during a cover-shoot interview with Fault Magazine, her first photo shoot in six years.
More recently, the Grammy winner said she’s turned to dance and choreography at a studio “as as a natural way of dealing with my ADHD.”
“I find the discipline really helps my brain,” she added.
The “I’m Like a Bird” performer said she was diagnosed with inattentive attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which is when a person has a hard time paying attention to small details, has trouble organizing tasks and has difficulty holding attention during conversation or other activities.
“I think it was probably a blessing that they didn’t know until now,” Furtado said. “Because I think I’m mature enough now to not be overly dramatic about it and just deal with it and find solutions rather than dwell on the emotional side of it.”
Furtado’s announcement came amid a return to music after a six-year break. In December, she performed at the Beyond the Valley festival in Australia. She headlined the New Year’s festival alongside Diplo, Kaytranada and Honey Dijon in her first performance since 2017. Now, she’s back in the studio recording a new album, also her first since 2017, according to Fault Magazine.
Furtado also stepped away from music in 2012 after a pair of albums struggled to find the commercial success of her earlier work. Furtado began her career with three consecutive multiplatinum albums. She would go on to become an indelible voice in pop music throughout the 2000s with hit singles such as “I’m Like a Bird,” “Promiscuous” featuring Timbaland and “Say It Right.”
During her hiatus, Furtado said she stayed busy by taking playwriting and sewing classes at a local university, doing ceramics, working at her friend’s record store, building up her music label and raising her daughter, according to a 2018 interview on “Larry King Now.” She briefly returned to music with an album and tour in 2017, but had been quiet since.
The Grammy winner is now preparing to headline a pair of festivals: Machaca Fest in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, in June and Portola in San Francisco in October. Among her new music is a collaboration with Dom Dolla, a house music producer, whom in the Fault Magazine interview she credited as someone who “really taught me to go back to that truth of just feeling good and finding the soul in the music.”
Furtado said that she’s recently realized the staying power of her music.
“One day, my daughter said, ‘Mom, your music is trending on TikTok,’” she said. “I didn’t even have TikTok on my phone, and I didn’t know how to use it. We started making fun little videos on there.”
While going out to clubs around the same time, she would hear DJs play her old songs and “discovered that people want to celebrate and have fun to my music.”
‘When I started in this business, people would say, ‘Oh, maybe I’m a one-hit wonder,’” Furtado continued, “but 20 years have gone by and people still like my music.”