The Girl from Ipanema: History and Key Facts

"Garota de Ipanema" (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɡaˈɾotɐ dʒipɐ̃ˈnemɐ]), or "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 Antônio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinícius de Moraes, with English lyrics 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 João 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 on the UK singles chart and charted highly throughout the world.

Numerous recordings have been used in films, sometimes as an elevator music cliché. It is believed to be the second-most-recorded pop song in history, after "Yesterday" by the Beatles. In 2000, the 1964 release by Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto on Verve Records was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It 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.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from The Girl from Ipanema by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.