Happy Birthday to "The Girl From Ipanema"
The iconic bossa nova song, which was a worldwide hit in the mid-sixties, turns fifty years old this summer (listen to it here). The Wall Street Journal has a nice write up about the story behind this perfect and breathy summer song, which is the second most recorded tune in pop-music history (surpassed only by “Yesterday” by The Beatles):
Clearly, this is art for the ages. But why?
One reason is the girl of the title. The embodiment of sultry pulchritude, she is also utterly unobtainable: “But each day when she walks to the sea/She looks straight ahead, not at me.”
“It’s the oldest story in the world,” says Norman Gimbel, who wrote the English lyrics. “The beautiful girl goes by, and men pop out of manholes and fall out of trees and are whistling and going nuts, and she just keeps going by. That’s universal.
So reasoned composer Antônio Carlos Jobim and poet Vinícius de Moraes five decades ago. Stalled on a number for a musical called “Blimp,” they sought inspiration at the Veloso, a seaside cafe in the Ipanema neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. There they remembered a local teenager, the 5-foot-8-inch, dark-haired, green-eyed Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, whom they often saw walking to the beach or entering the bar to buy cigarettes for her mother. And so they penned a paean to a vision.
In Revealed: The Real Girl from Ipanema, Moraes called the elusive girl
the paradigm of the young Carioca: a golden teenage girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling of youth that fades, of the beauty that is not ours alone—it is a gift of life in its beautiful and melancholic constant ebb and flow.
She was quite the dark-haired beauty.
The original version of the song was sung by the late Brazilian singer Pery Ribeiro in 1962. But the version that captured the world’s imagination, and won a Grammy in 1965, was an English cover that appeared on the album Getz/Gilberto:
Then the U.S. music publisher Lou Levy asked Mr. Gimbel to devise an English cover. With Mr. Jobim on piano, Stan Getz on sax, João Gilberto on guitar and Portuguese vocals, and Mr. Gilberto’s wife, Astrud, handling English vocals, the U.S. version was cut for the album “Getz/Gilberto” in March 1963.
Since then, it has been covered by singers from Frank Sinatra to Dionne Warwick to Amy Winehouse.
Today, the “girl” is sixty-six years old and continues to be a local celebrity in Brazil. Interestingly, she posed as a Brazilian Playboy Playmate in 1987 and 2003.
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Re: Happy Birthday to "The Girl From Ipanema"
I love Astrud Gilberto's voice and that version remains a favorite. Although I also must give a shout-out to Sergio Mendes.
Sep '10
Re: Happy Birthday to "The Girl From Ipanema"
That song makes me nervous. Seems like in the movies it is always playing right before something horrible happens. Pavlov was right. I hear that tune and hit the deck.
May '10
Re: Happy Birthday to "The Girl From Ipanema"
Emily Esfahani Smith:
Interestingly, she posed as a Brazilian Playboy Playmate in 1987 and 2003. · · 2 hours ago
Really? You're going to close with that and not provide a link?? Alas, can't look for it at work. But now I have a project for tonight!
I like the sound of the song, but honestly I could never make out most of the lyrics. I had no idea she was unobtainable. And " the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling of youth that fades" (Moraes). Give me a break! I hate that sort of over-analysis. If that's the case then it also applies to every nice thing ever said about anything ephemeral, which in the long run is everything. "He said, 'nice hat' and yet there was sadness in it, because one day the hat would no longer be nice." C'mon.
If she was in Playboy in 2003, her beauty hasn't faded much!
Edited on July 2, 2012 at 6:56pmMay '11
Re: Happy Birthday to "The Girl From Ipanema"
Emily, I followed the link to your article in "Acculturated". It looks to me like you showed pictures of yourself on the beach and on the boat. It sure looks like you!
Mar '11
Re: Happy Birthday to "The Girl From Ipanema"
As a former cheesy piano player from Officers' Clubs and wedding bands, let me be the first to say-- memorizing the bridge changes is STILL a CofC violation.
Sep '10
Re: Happy Birthday to "The Girl From Ipanema"
I'll say. Hot stuff!
Aug '10
Re: Happy Birthday to "The Girl From Ipanema"
I discovered Jobim's music thanks to Sergio Mendes. Fantastic stuff.
Aug '10
Re: Happy Birthday to "The Girl From Ipanema"
Ipanema? I bought a very good pair of shoes there once. The girls? Brazilian ones, in my opinion, don't look pretty but they sure do act pretty: their immense confidence amounts almost to glamour, and that is impressive. The song is OK, but I will be happy not to hear it anymore. A coworker who, for reasons I don't ask, likes to hang around as I compile Java programs often supplies the elevator music as this process clunks along, and it's always THIS number. At least he doesn't sing it.
But not to be a party-pooper. My enthusiasms remain confined to '80's Brazilian rock (which owes nothing at all to bossa nova), but I also like imagining Brazil in the early '60's, when I was in 3rd grade and my father made a business trip there. Rio still looks a lot like his slides. He hated traveling but he felt proprietary as I began my own explorations. I envy him his having seen the place when there was no a/c and men were scrupulously overdressed.
Jun '11
Re: Happy Birthday to "The Girl From Ipanema"
As a bassist this was often the tune where I'd take a solo (electric fretless). Fun song, though the chord changes were so bloody chromatic and surprisingly elusive at times, I still haven't really got it down.
Only latin jazz tune I have a softer spot for is Manha de Carnaval. And maybe, Blue Bossa (Joe Henderson).