Released: 1964
One of, if not the most powerful quality music has is the power of evocation, just a few simple phrases being able to transport something as simple as the human mind from one place to somewhere far, far away.
It’s near impossible for instance to listen to The Girl From Ipanema and to not be transported to a beach, or airy apartment in Rio De Janeiro, the Brazilian capital from which Bossa Nova sprouted as a movement thanks chiefly to it’s main instigator Antônio Carlos Jobim.
Jobim, Stan Getz and João Gilberto met in New York and jointly came up with the idea of recording an obscure Portugese language song originally written for a comedy. Introduced to Broadway songwriter Norman Gimbrel, they then decided that Gilberto’s wife Astrud – not a trained singer – would be the perfect foil for it’s newly minted English lyrics.
The result was perhaps the ultimate time and place song. You didn’t have to have even been to South America to appreciate the ambience, and the portrayal of a young girl knowing her destiny was to fade mirrored the inevitable departure of youth for everyone. For two and a half fleeting minutes though a magical feeling of displacement will always surround it.
The Voice Of Unreason 
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