Nelly Furtado Donates $1 Million Of Qaddafi Money To Charity

Nelly Furtado perfoming in 2007.

Morena Brengola/Getty

Members of the music industry are calling on Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Usher and 50 Cent to donate to charity the money they had made by performing private gigs for family members of Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi. So far none of them have commented on the matter, but earlier today Nelly Furtado tweeted that that she played a show for the Qaddafi family four years ago - and she's going to give the money to charity.

"In 2007, I received 1million$ from the Qaddafi clan to perform a 45 min. Show for guests at a hotel in Italy," she Tweeted. "I am going to donate the $."

Previously: Mariah, Beyoncé, Usher Face Calls To Donate Qaddafi Money to Charity

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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