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The Girl from Ipanema
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Wikipedia article
"'Garota de Ipanema'" ("'The Girl from Ipanema'") is a Brazilian bossa nova and jazz song. It was a worldwide hit in the mid-1960s and won a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965. It was written in 1962, with music by Antnio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vincius de Moraes. English lyrics were written later by Norman Gimbel.
The first commercial recording was in 1962, by Pery Ribeiro. The Stan Getz recording featuring the vocal debut of Astrud Gilberto became an international hit. This version had been shortened from the version on the album 'Getz/Gilberto' (recorded in March 1963, released in March 1964), which had also included the Portuguese lyrics sung by Astrud's then husband Joo Gilberto. In the US, the single peaked at number five on the 'Billboard' Hot 100, and went to number one for two weeks on the Easy Listening chart. Overseas it peaked at number 29 in the United Kingdom, and charted highly throughout the world.
Numerous recordings have been used in films, sometimes as an elevator music clich. It is believed to be the second most recorded pop song in history, after "Yesterday" by The Beatles. The song was inducted into the Latin Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2004, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.
History
The song was composed for a musical comedy titled 'Dirigvel' ("Airship"), then a work in progress of Vinicius de Moraes. The original title was "Menina que Passa" ("The Girl Who Passes By"); the first verse was different. Jobim composed the melody on his piano in his new house in Rua Baro da Torre, in Ipanema. In turn, Moraes had written the lyrics in Petrpolis, near Rio de Janeiro, as he had done with "Chega de Saudade" ("No More Blues") six years earlier. While firmly rooted in bossa nova, "The Girl from Ipanema" includes influences from blues and Tin Pan Alley.
During a recording session in New York with Joo Gilberto, Antnio Carlos Jobim and Stan Getz, the idea of cutting an English-language version came up. Norman Gimbel wrote the English lyrics. Joo's wife, Astrud Gilberto, was the only one of the Brazilians who could speak English well and was chosen to sing. Her voice, without trained singer mannerisms, proved a perfect fit for the song.
The key the song is played in traditionally has varied depending upon the origin of the recording. While the original Ribeiro version was in the key of G, most Brazilian performances use D and most American versions use F.
Frank Sinatra recorded the song with Jobim in 1967 for their album 'Francis Albert Sinatra & Antnio Carlos Jobim'. Ella Fitzgerald recorded it for her two-disc set of Brazilian music 'Ella Abraa Jobim', released by Pablo Today in 1981.
Ethel Ennis and Nat King Cole have also both recorded the song. A version by Gary Criss titled "The Girl From Ipanema / Brazilian Nights" from his album "Rio De Janeiro" reached number 19 in the Canadian RPM dance charts in August 1978.
Inspiration
Ipanema is a fashionable neighborhood located in the southern region of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
, the woman who inspired the song, in 2006.|alt=
The song was inspired by Helosa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto (now known as Hel Pinheiro), a seventeen-year-old girl living on Montenegro Street in Ipanema. Daily, she would stroll past the Veloso bar-caf, not just to the beach ("each day when she walks to the sea"), but in the everyday course of her life. She would sometimes enter the bar to buy cigarettes for her mother and leave to the sound of wolf whistles. In the winter of 1962, the composers saw the girl pass by the bar. Since the song became popular, she has become a celebrity.
In 'Revelao: a verdadeira Garta de Ipanema' ("'Revealed: The Real Girl from Ipanema'") Moraes wrote that she was "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 aloneit is a gift of life in its beautiful and melancholic constant ebb and flow."
Legacy
The legacy of "The Girl from Ipanema" was acknowledged by multiple aspects of the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics held in Rio de Janeiro: the Olympic and Paralympic mascots were respectively named Vinicius and Tom after the song's co-writers by a public vote, while the Olympics' opening ceremony featured a segment themed around the song and the architecture of Oscar Niemeyer. Jobim's grandson Daniel performed the song during the segment, which also featured an appearance by Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bndchen. Spotify reported that the song had been streamed on its service 40,000 times per day in the days following the ceremony (a 1200% increase), while in the U.S., the song reached #5 on 'Billboard's World Digital Songs chart the following week.
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Legal disputes
In 2001, the song's copyright owners (the heirs of their composer fathers) sued Pinheiro for using the title of the song as the name of her boutique (Garota de Ipanema). In their complaint, they stated that her status as The Girl from Ipanema (Garota de Ipanema) did not entitle her to use a name that legally belonged to them. Public support was strongly in favor of Pinheiro. A press release by Jobim and Moraes, the composers, in which they had named Pinheiro as the real Girl from Ipanema (Garota de Ipanema) was used as evidence that they had intended to bestow this title on her. The court ruled in favor of Pinheiro.
In a separate legal dispute, Astrud Gilberto sued Frito-Lay for trademark infringement for using the song in a TV advertisement for its baked potato chips. Gilberto argued that:
[A]s the result of the huge success of the 1964 recording, and her frequent subsequent performances of "Ipanema," she has become known as The Girl from Ipanema and is identified by the public with the 1964 recording. She claims as a result to have earned trademark rights in the 1964 recording, which she contends the public recognizes as a mark designating her as a singer. She contends, therefore, that Frito-Lay could not lawfully use the 1964 recording in an advertisement for its chips without her permission.'[http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F3/251/56/539915/ Oliveira v. Frito-Lay Inc.]', 251 F.3d 56 (2nd Cir. 2001).In 'Oliveira v. Frito-Lay Inc.' (2001), her claims were rejected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
"The Boy from Ipanema"
When sung by female artists the song has often been rendered as "The Boy from Ipanema", such as by Peggy Lee (1964), Ella Fitzgerald and The Supremes (1965), Shirley Bassey (1966) and Eartha Kitt (1974). Petula Clark sang it in 1977 on The Muppet Show. Crystal Waters recorded her version in 1996 for the various artists Red Hot + Rio compilation and was later included on her 1998 greatest hits set. Diana Krall recorded another version on her 2009 album 'Quiet Nights'.
The reason for "The Boy from Ipanema" version is partially caused by an awkward translation occurring when female vocalists sing: "But each time when she walks to the sea, she looks straight ahead not at HE." Some singers have corrected this by singing: "But each time when she goes for a swim, she looks straight ahead not at him."
A parody of the song, with different lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim, is entitled 'The Boy From...'.
Another parody is "The Girl With Emphysema" by comedian Bob Rivers.
The phrase "Boy from Ipanema" — but nothing from the song — appears in Norwegian recording artist Annie's "Anthonio". Likewise, the phrase "Girl from Ipanema" appears in The B-52's' 1985 single "Girl from Ipanema Goes to Greenland," again without any musical reference to the original song.
See also
*List of number-one adult contemporary singles of 1964 (U.S.)
References
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