Brazilian

The 50th song of my collection for this year is The Girl from Ipanema (or Garota de Ipanema) dating from 1962 by the king of bossa nova Antonion Carlos Jobim and famously recorded by Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz.

The eponymous girl from Ipanema was a young woman who lived on Montenegro Street in Ipanema who walked by the Veloso Café-bar each day, as the lyrics suggest: “Olha que coisa main linda, mais cheia de graça, é ela menina que vem e que passa seu doce balanço, a camino do mar” – “look, what a beautiful thing, so full of grace, she is the girl who comes and goes by in her sweet swing heading to the sea”.

The lyricist Vinicius de Moraes wrote about his inspiration in his book Revelação: a verdadeira Garota de Ipanema (“Revealed: The Real Girl from Ipanema“):

She was “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.”

I hope you enjoy my version! There’s more Latin music in my collection here, and if it’s your first time here, find out why I’m playing a song every day here.