Astrud fits so well the role of the Girl from Ipanema, even though she's not actually the girl who inspired Tom and Vinicius. She was always this soft-spoken, y

Astrud fits so well the role of the Girl from Ipanema, even though she's not actually the girl who inspired Tom and Vinicius. She was always this soft-spoken, youthful spirit who so gently reminded us of a time when we were also young and lovely. The original Girl from Ipanema was a 16 year-old (Helô Pinheiro, not Astrid) who walked into a neighborhood bar, "Bar do Veloso" a bar in Ipanema that still exists today under a new name [1], to buy cigarrettes for her parents. The poet-witness, Vinicius de Moraes, noted with the lyrics the melancolic, winterish sadness of middle age by contemplating the chasm that now separated him from an full-of-life adolescent. In 1962, Vinicius was turning 50 soon and had been expressing his bohemian self in a darker note. He rewrote the lyrics of Girl from Ipanema a few times to "cheer it up" a notch, but the B section today preserves the core meaning of the original lyrics: Why am I so lonely / Why am I so sad. The 1st version of the lyrics can be found around the webs too: I was tired of everything / of so many paths / striped out of poetry. Astrud on the other hand was a very naive young woman at that point in 1963. She was then married to nut-job, pot-head genius João Gilberto, who took her on tour to the US where she ended up in the famed Gilberto/Getz recordings. Astrud and Gilberto separated later that year (apparently he cheated on her). Stan Getz, Norman Gimbel (English lyrics) and Creed Taylor (producer) allegedly worked really hard to strip her, and every other Brazilian composer, away from any proceedings from the recordings, as they did with the of the English lyric recordings of Tom Jobim songs. With her steady-breath, no-vibrato vocal style (a Gilberto and Chet Baker staple) fragile and sweet-as-hell voice and slightly out-of-tune highs she became a definite icon of what modern meant 1960s. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/Pewt5ENShRSPgA5J8 https://goo.gl/maps/Pewt5ENShRSPgA5J8