Nelly Furtado Made Her First Album in 7 Years with Daughter Nevis, 21: ‘Greatest Gift in the World’ (Exclusive)

“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 of working together on the record, her seventh album and first in seven years. “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 singer-songwriter worked with Nevis to put together the “album that I had always wanted to make,” Furtado says of 7 (out now), for which she wrote 200 to 300 songs, before whittling them down to 14.

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.”

Born in Victoria, British Columbia, and raised by her Portuguese immigrant parents, António and Maria, Furtado soared to fame nearly 25 years ago. She introduced herself with her 2000 debut, Whoa, Nelly!, which featured her hits “I’m Like a Bird” and “Turn Off the Light.” But Furtado cemented her superstar status six years later with her smash album Loose, which topped the charts thanks to then-ubiquitous singles like “Promiscuous,” “Maneater” and “Say It Right.” 

But a few years after welcoming Nevis with her ex, composer Jasper Gahunia, 45, Furtado took a break from performing. It wasn’t until she began working on 7 that Furtado realized Nevis had never seen her in action.

“She was born two months before my second album, Folklore, came out in 2003, and she’d been on the road from newborn until age 4 pretty much nonstop,” Furtado says, “so we kind of had a really normal life until she hit her teens.”

When Furtado got back to work following her split from Jerry, “I had a lot on my heart and mind that I had to exorcise,” she says. “Because I hadn’t been on a stage in five years, I really hadn’t sung my heart out in a long time. I was on the mic getting this stuff out, just emotionally vomiting. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack, like, ‘Why does this feel so physiological?’ ” 

Channeling her heartache in the studio, Furtado produced some of her most vulnerable and cathartic music to date. “It’s such a beautiful thing to put your emotions into a song,” she adds. “It’s a healing process.”

It was also a learning process for both Furtado and Nevis, who cowrote four songs on the album ("Showstopper," "Corazón," "Fantasy," "Take Me Down"), in addition to helping with the record’s mixing, sequencing and packaging; she also has an A&R credit on 7 and provided background vocals on "Take Me Down" and "Fantasy."

“In the car I’m always like, ‘What’s this? Who’s this?’ I recognized she had really good taste in music. She’s my favorite person to talk to about music and pop culture,” Furtado says of her daughter, who, in the studio, “got a really cool master class.”

Nevis will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University in December and has already launched her own career in the music industry.

“It was a discovery process for both of us ... I was just a fly on the wall, absorbing as much as I could,” Nevis says of working with her mom. “Being treated like a colleague in that environment was really special and meaningful. The process a hundred percent brought us closer together, and the level of respect and understanding for each other just evolved into something new that we had never been able to access before.”

And Nevis was a motivating force for her mom in the studio, Furtado says: "I was like, 'Oh my god, my daughter's watching. I really got to step it up.' "

These days Furtado’s dating again (“It’s been fun,” she says), but her heart is all-in on work — and her children. While Nevis has left the nest, raising her two younger kids in Toronto is “double the work, double the chaos,” Furtado quips.

On a more serious mom note, she says, “I want to call up all those other moms who are pop singers: ‘Can we start a group chat on WhatsApp?’ Like, I can really relate to Shakira, raising her boys and touring, doing it all as a single mom. I don’t think I could ever see myself really slaying that duality 24/7, but it’s good to dream about it and keep striving toward that. My calling is music, but it’s also being a mother — and I’ve tried to honor both those things."

For more on Nelly Furtado, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.