The Girl from Ipanema (song)

"Garota de Ipanema" ("The Girl from Ipanema") is a well-known bossa nova song, a worldwide hit in the mid-1960s that won a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965. It was written in 1962, with music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. English lyrics were written later by Norman Gimbel.

The first commercial recording was in 1962, by Pery Ribeiro. The version performed by Astrud Gilberto, along with João Gilberto and Stan Getz, from the 1964 album Getz/Gilberto, became an international hit. In the US, it peaked at number five on the Hot 100, and went to number one number 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 cliché (for example, near the end of The Blues Brothers). It is believed to be the second-most recorded pop song in history, after "Yesterday" by The Beatles. 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


Ipanema is a seaside neighborhood located in the southern region of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

The song was composed for a musical comedy titled Dirigível (Blimp), then a work-in-progress of Vinícius de Moraes. The original title was "Menina que Passa" ("The Girl Who Passes By"); the famous first verse was different. Jobim composed the melody on his piano in his new house in Rua Barão da Torre, in Ipanema. In turn, Moraes had written the lyrics in Petrópolis, near Rio de Janeiro, as he had done with "Chega de Saudade" ("No More Blues") six years earlier.

During a recording session in New York with João Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Stan Getz, the idea of cutting an English language version came up. João'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 song was inspired by Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto (now Helô Pinheiro), a seventeen year old girl living on Montenegro Street in the fashionable Ipanema district in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Daily, she would stroll past the popular Veloso bar-café, 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 watched the girl pass by the bar, and it is easy to imagine why they noticed her—Helô was a 173-cm (five-foot eight-inch) brunette, and she attracted the attention of many of the bar patrons. Since the song became popular, she has become a celebrity.

In Revelação: a verdadeira Garota de Ipanema (Revealed: The Real Girl from Ipanema) Moraes wrote she was:


 * "o paradigma do broto carioca; a moça dourada, misto de flor e sereia, cheia de luz e de graça mas cuja a visão é também triste, pois carrega consigo, a caminho do mar, o sentimento da mocidade que passa, da beleza que não é só nossa—é um dom da vida em seu lindo e melancólico fluir e refluir constante."

Translation:


 * "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."

Legal disputes
In 2001, the song's copyright owners (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) does not entitle her to use a name that legally belongs 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 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 ad for its baked potato chips. Gilberto argued that"as 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."In Oliveria v. Frito-Lay Inc. (2001), her claims were rejected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Disco version
In 1977, a disco version of "The Girl from Ipanema" by Astrud Gilberto was released, produced by Vincent Montana featuring a distinct Salsoul style disco sound.

The Boy from Ipanema
When sung by female artists the song has often been rendered as "The Boy from Ipanema", such as by Shirley Bassey, Peggy Lee, Petula Clark on the Muppet Show, and Diana Krall on her 2009 album Quiet Nights.

A parody of the song, with different lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim, is entitled The Boy From....