Space Coast Daily World Cup Special Presentation
By Space Coast Daily // June 27, 2014
SECOND MOST RECORED POP SONG IN HISTORY
ABOVE VIDEO: Keith Malone wraps up Space Coast Daily’s on-location coverage from Veloso Bar in Rio where the world-famous music video of”The Girl From Ipanema” was recorded .
ABOVE VIDEO: Watch the playlist of Space Coast Daily’s World Cup video coverage. Click the right arrow to skip to the next video in the list.
Summer 1962. Rio de Janeiro. At the Veloso Bar, a block from the beach at Ipanema, two friends—the composer Antonio Carlos Jobim and the poet Vinícius de Moraes—are drinking Brahma beer and musing about their latest song collaboration.
The duo favor the place for the good brew and the even better girl-watching opportunities. Though both are married men, they’re not above a little ogling. Especially when it comes to a neighborhood girl nicknamed Helô.
Eighteen-year-old Heloisa Eneida Menezes Pais Pinto is a Carioca—a native of Rio. She’s tall and tan, with emerald green eyes and long, dark wavy hair.
They’ve seen her passing by, as she’s heading to the beach or coming home from school. She has a way of walking that de Moraes calls “sheer poetry.”
Legend has it that Jobim and de Moraes were so inspired by this shapely coed, they wrote a song for her right on the bar napkins.
SECOND MOST RECORED POP SONG IN HISTORY
“The Girl From Ipanema” is a well-known Brazilian 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 U.S., it peaked at number five on the 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 cliché.
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. In 2009, the song was voted by the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stone as the 27th greatest Brazilian song.
– Wikipedia
