Thank you all for joining me today to our time travel to Brazil of 1962!

So I hope you had a pleasent flight, because I’d like to begin our travel with one of the most famous and controversial songs that has ever been published here – The Girl From Ipanema (Garota De Ipanema).

The original song (written by Vinicius De Moraes and sang by Antônio Carlos Jobim) is in Brazil’s national language – Portugese.

But don’t worry, there are many covers for it in English.

So for now just sit back, relax and enjoy!

Soothing isn’t it?

So let’s move on to what does this song talk about:

It’s a story about a man sitting on the Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro at mid-day, as out of the blue a girl passes by and mesmerizes him with her beauty.

The man is most likely drunk at the time and has no courage to talk to the fair lady, but he wishes she knew how much the entire beach thinks she’s lovely.

Eventually, he ends up alone for she had already left the beach…

The inspiration for this song is a real woman named Helô Pinheiro, A famous brazilian model.

The events really did happen at the very same beach and lead to the release of the most famous Bossa Nova song ever.

Okay, Okay I promised you a cover as well so, please welcome with a great round of applause the incredible…

Amy Winehouse!

Well it’s about time to discuss about what makes this song popular and memorable.

in order to understand that I’ll explain a little more about Bossa Nova:

In the early 60’s João Gilberto and Tony Jobim invented a new kind of music influenced by samba, balads and american jazz combined. The goal was to create calm songs with no loud percussions. It became a worldwide hit and singers like Ella Fitzgerald embraced the Bossa Nova to their music.

This is basically one of the main reasons of it’s success – a new and exciting music genre!

Plus, the song tells us a story. It details the singers’ fear of rejection when it comes to hitting on good looking girls.

That’s something most of us can empathize with if we don’t look like a supermodel…

And finally we need to refer to the structure of the song:

basically, the original song is pretty short, has 4 stanzas and has no chorus. Half of the song is pure melody and then the singers repeat the last stanza at the end.

Songs that just go on with a lack of repetitive chorus usually do not become so popular, but this one did big time. It’s the calming atmosphere and the mobility it creates that cover for the very sipmle lyrics.

To conclude I’d like to share my personal opinion and say that I love this song because I experience a dash of peacefulness by listening to it. The song fits different situations and most of all, it’s perfect when you’re at the beach.

Furthermore, I enjoy learning new songs in foreign languages so the connection was immediate for me.

And last but not least, I recommend everyone to watch the 2019 Netflix original serie “Coisa Mais Linda”, inspired by the Garota De Ipanema song.

The serie tells the story of a young feminist mother who flies alone to Rio in 1959, later to find out her husband is cheating on her. She decides to get up on her feet and open the first restaurant with live Bossa Nova music, even though no one believes in her.

Thanks for reading!