Just a month ago Canadian singer Nelly Furtado felt she had finally arrived.

Sure, the 22-year-old from Victoria, B.C., has a multi-platinum hit album on her hands in Whoa Nelly! And sure, the single I'm Like a Bird is a worldwide hit.

Yes, she swept up four awards at the Junos in March. Yes, that was her onstage at the VH-1 Divas Live show with the likes of Aretha Franklin and the Backstreet Boys.

But Furtado says she finally realized the magnitude of what she's done when she performed at the Elton John AIDS Foundation's post-Oscar bash in Hollywood.

"When I was at the Oscars, I felt I made the transition from pop fan to pop peer," Furtado said yesterday, hours before going onstage at the Walker Theatre.

Furtado says she owes much of her immediate success to her home country.

"Canada launched my career at an international level -- through the Junos, through the fact that I'm Like A Bird was a big hit here before anywhere else," Furtado says, noting she's not quite a breakthrough artist in the States, though she is breaking out.

"In America, people have had to work a bit more to find me and find my record so at my shows you see a different contingent, sort of a music-magazine kind of a crowd who feel they're in on a secret.

"Canada's not like that -- it's just pure. You get the kids and you get a wide audience -- there's another level of fame for me in Canada that you can see at the shows. You can see it in their eyes, especially.' "

Furtado admits she does have a few 'Ohmigod' moments of fandom of her own.

"Yeah, you do. The Catch-22 of it is that if you're so freaked out and so nervous about it you're not going to be Nelly Furtado, the person that they hired for the gig," she says of opening for the likes of U2, as she did at the end of March in Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta.

"Of course, there's a crazy moments when you go, 'Aaah!' When I was in the dressing room and my manager came in and said 'Bono would like to meet you,' and I screamed. It was, like, 'Where do I go?' "