Let’s lighten things up. Today’s song is Amy’s remake of “The Girl From Ipanema” from her posthumous 2011 compilation Lioness: Hidden Treasures. More on the origins of the song in a minute.
This is my light palate cleanser following the seriousness of “Back To Black” yesterday. Today I offer a funny story. My memory of this event might be skewed, but humor me: I used to watch the NBC singing competition The Voice. This was back in the Cee-Lo Green/Christina Aguilera years. A girl came up in the blind auditions and sang “The Girl From Ipanema” and the judges freaked out. They raved about how much they loved what she did with the song and how they couldn’t wait to see what else she could do with that creativity. The girl failed to mention to the judges that she was singing an inferior note-for-note ripoff of Amy Winehouse’s version of the song that they had clearly never heard. I was like, “Motherfucker, are you seriously gonna take credit for that?” Yep. She didn’t make it far. For the second consecutive day a word of advice to anyone on those shows who wants to put their own spin on an Amy Winehouse song: Don’t. Just stop it. You probably have a lovely voice. You’re not Amy. Sing “Black Velvet” like everyone else that wants to showcase their bluesy voice. No disrespect, Alannah Myles. For whatever reason your song is a magnet for that type of vocalist.
If you’re reading this and wondering what the hell “The Girl From Ipanema” is I have news for you: You’ve probably heard it before and you just don’t realize it. If you haven’t actually heard it, you’re in for a treat. “The Girl From Ipanema” was a Brazilian bossa nova song later translated to English and performed by Stan Getz, João Gilberto, and his wife Astrud Gilberto in 1964. It won Record of the Year at the 1965 Grammy Awards. Part of the charm of the Getz/Gilberto version is that Astrud’s lack of singing experience led to an iconic stripped down vocal performance. Amy flips that and uses “Girl From Ipanema” to show off her jazz chops. Both versions are must-listen.
I don’t have a live version of “Girl from Ipanema” to recommend so I’m going to dedicate a paragraph to another remake of Amy’s – her 2011 version of “Body and Soul” with Tony Bennett for his Duets II: The Great Performances collection. It did not make the cut on my mix CD, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t great. I actually find this video difficult to watch. This was recorded in March of 2011…about four months before Amy passed. If you watch this video you’d never know it. She looks and sounds beautiful. Her nervousness around one of her heroes is endearing. My favorite moment is when she kisses the necklace given to her by her Nan and points to heaven in tribute. I’m sure Nan was looking down with pride seeing her girl singing with one of her favorites. If you don’t know anything about Amy Winehouse it’s just a lovely video. If you know Amy it’s heartbreaking. It looked like she’d turned a corner. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.
Well, this is the second day in a row I managed to make myself sad. I need to break this pattern. The weekend is near and I need a pick-me-up. Hopefully I’ll have that for you tomorrow and we can all enter the weekend on a high. Back with one more song for the week tomorrow.
mookiefantana 