Stop. And listen again, for the first time.

There are songs that become so popular, and get covered by so many different artists, that they evolve into a sort of cultural wallpaper--seen out of the corner of your eye, but not really heard.

"The Girl From Ipanema" epitomizes this syndrome. A victim of its own success (yes, it's the 2nd most recorded pop song EVER), its many cover versions have earned it a bad rap as "easy listening" music. But just because much of Brazilian music pulls off the trick of being easy to listen to--light, delicate, full of felicidade--doesn't mean it's "easy listening."

With that subtle groove that gets in your footsteps and then subliminally works its way up to your hips (and you don't even have rhythm), this song introduced the world to bossa nova.

The MP3 I've posted here is the original full-length track that features equal parts of Joao Gilberto's Portuguese whisper-speak singing alongside then-wife Astrud's cool, detached English song stylings. But people who heard this song on the radio back in '62 would've heard the short version that truncated much of Joao's Portuguese. The Portuguese lyrics are a revelation on two levels: their inherent poetry (here's a decent a literal translation) and their complex rhythmic counterpoint to the guitar. The mad rush of syllables fits the complicated meter in such fashion that it literally structures the song:

OL-ha que COI-sa mais LIN-da,
mais cheia de GRA-CA
É E-la me-NI-na
que VEM que PA-ssa
Num doce bal-AN-ço
ca-MIN-ho do MAR

MO-ça do COR-po dou-RA-do
do SOL de Ipa-NE-ma
O seu balan-CA-do
é mais que um po-E-ma
É a COI-sa mais LIN-da
que eu já vi pas-SAR

Norman Gimbel's English translation, with a whopping 10 less syllables in the second verse alone, is almost like a hasty sketch of a detailed painting--you get the idea of things, but something is missing and therefore something has changed.

Of course, it's the half-English nature of this song that helped propel Brazil and bossa nova into American (and world) consciousness, but don't mind me if I ask you to listen again to the Portuguese, this time with a fresh ear.

Getz/Gilberto, "The Girl From Ipanema"

MP3 File