British star George Michael speaks Portuguese fluently as he sings the first verse of “Desafinado”. Astrud Gilberto soon follows and the two voices complement each other beautifully in this slightly modernized version of the song Antônio Carlos Jobim co-wrote with Newton Ferreira De Mendonça in 1958.
The title means “out of tune” and the lyrics explain in a slightly ironic way what this new Brazilian genre called bossa nova was all about. Because Astrud Gilberto had made a decisive contribution to its worldwide popularity in the early 1960s, her duet with George Michael in 1996 was a harmonious thing – and one of the last times the singer spoke out musically.
Recommended Editorial Content
At this point you will find external content selected by our editors, which enriches the article with additional information for you. Here you can display or hide the external content with one click.
I consent to the external content being displayed to me. This allows personal data to be transmitted to third-party platforms. You can find more information on this in the data protection settings. You can find these at the bottom of our page in the footer, so that you can manage or revoke your settings at any time.
There are numerous anecdotes surrounding the recording that made her a star and bossa nova a global pop phenomenon. What is certain is that Astrud Gilberto accompanied her husband João Gilberto to New York in March 1963, where he recorded an album for the Verve label with jazz saxophonist Stan Getz.
The two men had no common language apart from music, so Astrud, who knew English, helped with the communication. Producer Creed Taylor heard her singing in the control room during a break and suggested incorporating English lyrics into the song “The Girl from Ipanema” and having Astrud sing them. Her charmingly nonchalant delivery was instrumental in making the song a hit and the Getz/Gilberto album a four-time Grammy-winning classic.
Astrud Gilberto was born in Salvador de Bahia in 1940, the youngest daughter of a Brazilian teacher and a German named Weinert, who gave private English lessons. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro in the late 1940s, where Astrud married musician João Gilberto in 1960.
The marriage was divorced four years later after the singer had an affair on her first tour. The Brazilian press then wrote contemptuously about Astrud Gilberto, who has had a divided relationship with her home country ever since. She only appeared there once. In 1963 she had already moved to the USA anyway.
In the slightly blurred cover photograph of her solo debut, which came out in early 1965 and lasts just under half an hour, she looked seriously and a little shyly into the camera. Her singing, too, was always characterized by a melancholic gentleness, which formed an attractive contrast to the bossa rhythm, as shown, for example, in “Meditation” sung in English and padded with strings, or “Água de beber” performed with Antônio Carlos Jobim. More than a dozen albums followed, mostly a mixture of jazz standards, pop songs and Brazilian titles. It also came to collaborations with stars like Chet Baker or Quincy Jones.
After the turn of the millennium, the singer withdrew from the music business and devoted herself to painting and animal welfare. Astrud Gilberto has died at the age of 83.
Source: Tagesspiegel
I have been working in the news industry for over 10 years now and I have worked for some of the biggest news websites in the world. My focus has always been on entertainment news, but I also cover a range of other topics. I am currently an author at Global happenings and I love writing about all things pop-culture related.
