Easily the most famous bossa nova song ever, and possibly the most recognizable saxophone melody, here’s Stan Getz with Joao Gilberto and Astrud Gilberto doing their signature hit, “Girl From Ipanema”:
I remember reading a “Peanuts” cartoon from a paperback collection when I was a kid in which Linus said he was the only student to get an A on their geography test because he was the only one who knew where Ipanema was. It took me years to get the joke. I don’t actually have any covers of this song, but having discovered that Amy Winehouse did a version of it, I have to include that here:
I’m not sure how I feel about that. I love Amy Winehouse’s voice, but I don’t think it works with that song, and I’m not crazy about the arrangement, either. I may just be overly influenced by Astrud Gilberto’s perfect and iconic rendering. (Though it must be noted, Winehouse and Gilberto have basically the same hairdo. That has to count for something.) For something closer to the original, there’s Diana Krall and her unembeddable version. Great stuff, and I’m always a sucker for a change of gender perspective.
For something completely different, the B-52’s send the girl from Ipanema to Greenland:
Not sure where Kate Pierson was for that, but whatever. Neither cover nor “same name different song”, but sui generis like the B-52’s themselves.
That’s sort of creepy: I just bought the Getz/Gilberto album (which is famous for introducing “The Girl from Ipanema”) on Thursday.
A lof of Joao Gilberto’s early stuff is fantastic.