NELLY FURTADO NEVIS - FINDS SWEET HARMONY WITH DAUGHTER

THE POP STAR AND MOM OF 3 000 BUILT A UNIQUE BOND WITH HER OLDEST CHILD AND WORKED THROUGH HER BIGGEST HEARTBREAK WHILE MAKING HER NEW ALBUM

- JEFF NELSON

"Oh my God, that's so cute-I wanna take a picture!" Nelly Furtado declares, phone ready as she enters the live room at the Orange Lounge recording studio in Toronto, where her 21-year-old daughter Nevis Gahunia is posing for portraits at their joint People photo shoot. After an outfit change into complementary tracksuits, the pop-star mom and her mini-me kick back on the banquette in the control room next door. The cozy space is a special one for the pair. Over the past four years they've spent countless hours in this room, writing and recording 75 percent of Furtado's new album 7.

Creating music together was a truly bonding experience. In 2020 Furtado-who had taken a break from the spotlight to raise Nevis and her two younger children-got the itch to make music again. "I said, 'Hey, Neve, do you want to come with me to the studio?" She sat right next to me, and it was like magic," Furtado, 45, says. "Between a parent and a child, you do need that other thing that connects you. And how interesting that it was music, right under our nose the whole time, but we didn't really discover that until that first day." In the years that followed, the singersongwriter worked with Nevis to put together the "album that I had always wanted to make," Furtado says of her seventh LP and her first in seven years. In the process the Grammy winner healed from what she calls "the biggest heartbreak of my life"-her split from her rapper ex Jerry (aka Gerard Damien Long), 33, with whom she shares a daughter, 6, and son, 5. She also deepened her bond with her firstborn. "I'd been given this opportunity to connect with my teenager in this way. It just felt like the greatest gift in the world," Furtado says. "What a blessing."