Jeff Nelson is the Senior Music Editor at PEOPLE. He has been with the brand since 2014, editing, writing and reporting across entertainment verticals.
Nelly Furtado is reflecting on her early days in the music industry -- and its dark side.
The pop star broke through in 2000 with hits like "I'm Like a Bird" and "Turn off the Light." One of the biggest things she remembers from the era: "a lot of airbrushing."
"I have olive skin, and they'd kind of lighten my skin a lot in photos," Furtado, 45, tells PEOPLE, "and kind of take my hips down all the time -- they would always kind of cut off in editorials."
The experience inspired her song "Powerless," which appeared on her sophomore album, 2003's Folklore. On the song, Furtado -- who was raised in British Columbia by her Portuguese immigrant parents António and Maria -- sings: "Paint my face in your magazines / Make it look whiter than it seems / Paint me over with your dreams / Shove away my ethnicity."
"By my second album, I guess I was kind of angry about it," Furtado -- who just released her seventh album, 7 -- adds.
Despite those experiences, Furtado looks back on her early fame fondly and feels she was protected from the seedier showbiz trappings that befell some of her pop-star peers.
"I felt so lucky and blessed. I always had such a good team around me, that was family. My team around me felt so solid and really looking out for my best interests. And I think I was just raised right. My mom was really strong, and so is her mom, and her mom, and her mom -- a very matriarchal family, in general, on both sides, all my grandmothers, and great-grandmothers," Furtado says. "So I was given a really solid kind of sense of assertiveness, I'm going to call it. So that was a good tool for me to navigate the music industry. And I was given really solid advice from a young age, luckily, from very paternal sort of people around me. So I was lucky, I was one of the lucky ones."
The singer also trusted her gut when it came to her songwriting and beyond.
"I was pretty feisty, so I really knew what I wanted," Furtado says. "For instance, let's say a photo shoot or something, I'd always bring my own little carry-on with my own little raver pants and tank tops and glitter, just in case I didn't like what the stylist brought to the shoot, just to make sure I was comfortable, and just blazing my own trail I guess, in my own way. You have to, I think. You have to kind of have that sense of self. I think it's important, to navigate the industry. You have to kind of listen to the tiny voice inside. That's really important."
After a break from the spotlight to raise her kids Nevis Gahunia, 21, and a younger daughter, 6, and son, 5, Furtado is now back in action. She just released 7, her seventh album and first in seven years, on Friday, Sept. 20.
"The key for me, with this new album, is just getting back into the craft," she says of the record, which she worked on with daughter Nevis. "It's like a whole new me, who's stronger, braver, more confident."