We've got a cure for this winter's Seasonal Affective Disorder: the sunny Samba stylings of master Sax-smith Stan Getz along with the sensual murmurings of Astrud Gilberto - in one of the most "audio-erotic" recordings of all time: THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA.

Jobim's masterpiece started  the Bossa Nova craze, and became on of the most covered songs in history, and your dogged musicologists, Bill and Rich, will attempt to uncover why. 


From: https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/brazil/articles/the-mystery-behind-the-girl-from-ipanema/

So who was the girl that inspired such beautiful lyrics? She was Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto (now Heloísa Pinheiro) who was just 17 years old at the time. She lived in Ipanema and would go out shopping or to the beach, often accompanied by wolf-whistles from locals. Morales later wrote a book called Revelação: a verdadeira Garota de Ipanema – Revealed: The Real Girl from Ipanema – where he describes Pinheiro and the effect she unintentionally had on him and Jobim. He says she is the true paradigm of a Carioca girl, “the golden girl, mixed with flower and mermaid, full of light and grace but whose vision is also sad, because she carries with her, on the way to the sea, the feeling of what passes, of beauty that is not only ours – it is a gift of life in its beautiful and melancholy and steady flow.”

This song propelled Pinheiro into the spotlight where she became a successful model, including modeling as a Playboy Playmate in 1987 and again in 2003 when aged 58. “The Girl from Ipanema” was also used during the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics in Rio, which consequently led to the song being streamed on Spotify an incredible 40,000 times a day seeing it once again entering the Billboard charts in the U.S.