Why did Nelly Furtado stop singing in 2006? Breakdown explained as singer quits music again amid body shaming comments

Nelly Furtado has announced that she will be retiring from performing once again, almost twenty years after she had first stepped down in 2006 after having a mental breakdown. The Grammy winner announced her stepping down through a post on Instagram, which also commemorated the 25th anniversary of her breakthrough album Whoa, Nelly!

Nelly Furtado announced through her Instagram that she would "step away from performance for the foreseeable future and pursue some other creative and personal endeavours."

The Canadian artist faced online body shaming after her performance at the Manchester Pride. She captioned her post with a throwback photo of her in pink, along with a video of her on stage, thanking her fans:

"25 years later., my music has reached a whole new generation of fans and I couldn't be happier about that. In the year 2000 I remember feeling purpose in hoping some kid would dust off the Whoa, Nelly! vinyl one day in a record shop and think it was cool or inspiring, so l never could have guessed that there would be so many new ways to discover "old" music in 2025!"

She went on to talk about how "surreal and joyful" it was to her that people were still listening to her music, as well as the new generation of people discovering her music. She added that she liked performing on stages around the world. She added that it made her "believe in magic."

She went on to talk about her stepping away from performing:

"All this aside, I have decided to step away from performance for the foreseeable future and pursue some other creative and personal endeavours that I feel would better suit this next phase of my life."

She added:

"I have enjoyed my career immensely, and I still love writing music as I have always seen it as a hobby I was lucky enough to make into a career. I'Il identify as a songwriter forever. I'm grateful for all the years of fun, community and wonder."

She finished by thanking all the people in her life and wishing the best to the new generation of artists and performers.

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Why did Nelly Furtado retire from singing in 2006?

Furtado stepped out of the limelight first around 20 years ago after she announced that she suffered a mental breakdown at the peak of her career. She revealed to The Daily Mail in 2017:

"I had a nervous breakdown on stage. I was on the Loose tour [2007] and my daughter was with me – I was being a mum and a singer on the road. I was exhausted. Then one night I went on stage and I suddenly realised how stressed out I was. I actually cried my way through the first two songs."

Nelly Furtado then went on to say how a break benefited her:

"I took a break from music and went home. And I realised that being at home and having the whole family experience was what I was seeking."

She continued speaking about how burnout had affected her, saying:

"It was too much too soon. After two years of intense touring and partying, I'd spend hours alone in my LA home, just staring at the floor. I felt like a fraud, believing that people liked me for my image and not my music."

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Her return in 2009 and 2017

In 2009, Nelly Furtado released Mi Plan, which was an album in Spanish, and she followed it up with another album in 2012 by the name of The Spirit Indestructible. Both did not do well, and she went on another break for five years.

Speaking during an interview with Billboard, she stated:

"I have had a lot of ups and downs in my career on a commercial level, so I'm very bulletproof in that way. We'll see what happens and just keep on chugging along."

During the five years that she was on break, Nelly Furtado spent a lot of time with Free The Children, a charity organization, with regular visits to Kenya. She added:

"I took some time to pursue some personal passions. I did everything from pottery classes to sewing classes. I took a playwriting class at the University of Toronto to pursue a few ideas I had. It was a time of self-development."

Nelly Furtado later came out with her 2017 album, The Ride, as an independent artist, and even that fared badly. In America, it only sold slightly over 1,800 copies in its initial week. She told Forbes at that time:

"Becoming independent and owning this new record has been very pivotal for me because I'm able to own everything that I sing."

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Nelly Furtado, who is now 46, has been performing at major festivals all over Europe for the past two years and promoting body positivity through her social media. She recently uploaded a photo of herself in an orange bikini on New Year.

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