artists: Nelly Furtado and Timbaland

songwriters: Nelly Furtado, Timothy 'Timbaland' Mosely, and Nate 'Danja' Hills

date released: 2006 by Nelly Furtado and Timbaland

From their 2006 album, 'Loose', this song was released as a single in the same year. 'Say It Right' received a positive critical response for the production quality and the range in Furtado's vocal performance. It received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance but it lost to Amy Winehouse's 'Rehab.'

Furtado was born on December 2, 1978, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Her Portuguese parents, Maria Manuela and Antonio Jose Furtado, were both immigrants from the Azores and emigrated to Canada in the late 1960s.

 Nelly was named after Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim. At age four, she began performing and singing in her native Portuguese language. Furtado's first public performance was when she sang a duet with her mother at a church on Portugal Day. She began playing musical instruments at the age of nine, learning the trombone, ukulele, and in later years, “ the guitar and keyboards. At 12, she began writing songs, and as a teenager, she spent eight summers working as a chambermaid with her mother, along with her brother and sister, who was a housekeeper in Victoria.

 Nellie is proud of her working-class background. She has stated that coming from a working-class background has shaped her identity in a positive way.