Nelly Furtado Was ‘Scared’ While Making ‘Maneater’: ‘It Had the Devil in It’

One of Nelly Furtado’s biggest hits is her 2006 song “Maneater.” The song was a success on the charts, but Furtado said that she felt nervous while recording it. She said that something that had never happened in the studio’s history occurred during the recording session. She began to feel that the devil was in the song.

Nelly Furtado said ‘Maneater’ was frightening to record

In 2005, Furtado recorded “Maneater” with Timbaland in Miami. As they were working on the song, a speaker burst into flames. 

“This is true — there are many witnesses who were there: When we recorded ‘Maneater,’ a speaker caught fire,” she told the BBC. “It started smoking and a flame shot out of the speaker, which nobody at the Hit Factory in Miami had ever seen before in the 40 years the studio has been there.”

She said the moment actually scared her. She said it felt as though the beat had summoned some sort of entity. 

“We put that beat on, and it was so rumbling and rapturous and pagan that it incited a fire! We actually were scared of the beat,” she said, adding, “We felt like it had the devil in it, or something.”

The fire made them stop working on the song for a while.

“We put it away for a few weeks, until we had the courage to play it again,” she said. “It was life-threatening! Someone almost got first-degree burns.”