Mark my words: Nelly Furtado is one of the four horsemen of the coming overproduced-pop apocalypse.

You knew it had to end sometime, didn't you? And it couldn't be soon enough. With the release of the new PJ Harvey disc and U2 poised to reestablish themselves as ass-kicking intelligent rockers, I am more hopeful than ever that the sugarcoated boys and girls and the adolescent ragers will soon be falling by the wayside. (Plus the new Backstreet Boys song SUCKS, even for them.) In a world of pop music that only cares how beautiful or how ugly you can be, Furtado is a refreshingly literate voice, cloaked in the current conventions of the genre.

She launches her attack with "Shit on the Radio," which, as the title implies, is a far cry from anything her girly-girl contemporaries would dare attach their monikers to. "You liked me till you heard my shit on the radio," she confronts anyone within earshot. "You liked me till you saw me on your TV/Well, if you're so low below then why are you watching?" Her voice is a combination of spoken word punkiness and girl-pop innocence, and is never more pointed and revealing than when she's asking her audience to redefine just what they're listening to and why they're doing it. The music itself runs the gamut from Latin hip-hop to catchy alternative to dance; her experimentation with rhythms and quirky pop is familiar territory reinvented. Taking down the current pop order is going to require some counterintelligence from a woman on the inside, and Furtado's brain, hidden in an innocuously poppy landscape, is leveling both barrels at the opposition.

Not to imply that Furtado is the greatest poet to stumble onto a guitar and poof… the rest is history. She certainly has her share of Jewel moments, such as "Party’s" opener: "Talking to the mirror again but its not listening." Furtado has some kind of weird bird fetish, most obviously manifested in (duh) "I'm a Bird," the album's first single. She mentions birds and flying and the almost ridiculously obvious metaphor of freedom far too many times for my taste. Yet even in her darkest moments of lyrical banality, the great and merciful Furtado doesn't get anywhere close to the metaphorical density of, say, Britney Spears' "Lucky." In fact, Furtado knows and uses (gasp!) words that are apparently contractually forbidden to most pop stars on the market today. I mean, when was the last time you heard Justin Timberlake use the word "ambivalence?"

"Shit on the Radio" may well be the best track, both musically and lyrically, but "Hey, Man’s!" violins and steady-as-a-clock beat is a great way to open the album. "I Will Make You Cry" and "Trynna Find a Way" show off her rap tendencies, and on the wonderfully bass-funky "Turn Off the Light," she sounds like a female Everlast. "Well, Well" cannot contain its bursting dance-beat tendencies, and it is on this song that Nelly Furtado is, in a nutshell, revealed. Sugar-sweet trip-hopping under floaty vocals makes way for a chorus of "I say what I mean/but I don't mean what I say." Thank you, Nelly, for having the guts, brains, and creativity to say anything at all. Good luck storming the castle—and bring me back the head of Nick Carter!