• Music Astrud Gilberto, the voice of Chica de Ipanema dies

The recent death at the age of 83 of Astrud Gilberto -Astrud Evangelina Weinert, his birth name- who went down in musical history by popularizing bossa nova thanks to La chica de Ipanema has highlighted who was the real woman in whom this song winner of four Grammys that has appeared known soundtracks of films and series was inspired.

In Rio de Janeiro there was a bar called Veloso where the lyricist and poet Vinícius de Moraes and the musician Antonio Carlos Jobim used to meet. In the early 60s they used to see a stunning young brunette who passed in front of the window every time she went to the beach or to do her daily chores. It was Helô Pinheiro (77), 17 years old at the time, whose captivating beauty inspired the first version of the song that sold more than five million copies.

They got down to work and in 1962 they created one of the most covered songs in history that have come to sing from Frank Sinatra to Madonna. At that time, Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto was about to study journalism and law at university and had somewhat low self-esteem because she did not consider herself as beautiful as her friends. That feeling would soon change. As Vinícius said: "We watched her from the terrace of the Veloso bar while we had a whiskey. Antonio Carlos Jobim and I were only silent before his wonderful presence. The song was made for her, which we loved." Such was the crush they suffered that even Jobim came to ask several times to marry him despite the 18 years that separated them.

Helô Pinheiro, today. APAndre Penner

Despite her strict upbringing, Hêlo did not mind walking in a bikini to the beaches of Ipanema where she captured the attention of all men. The compliments overlapped each other, a situation that reddened that teenage daughter of an army general and a tremendously ultraconservative mother. Four years after the composition that Astrud popularized in English, she married the engineer Fernando Mendes, with whom she had four children, Kiki (51), Jô (49), Ticiane (47) and Fernando (43) who have made her a grandmother on several occasions.

When he remembers what that bombshell meant, Helô has always commented that "it gave me fame, but at first I couldn't believe it was happening to me. I was so shy... That happened in 1962, but only three years later everyone wanted to meet that girl the song was talking about." And Vinícius revealed the identity of the girl who later dyed herself blonde. She took advantage of the pull and founded a chain of shops selling bikinis with the name Girl from Ipanema. In 2001 she suffered a hard blow from the heirs of the composers, since they sued her for using the name of the song for their businesses. A psychological and monetary wear from which she took time to recover despite reaching an out-of-court settlement that she considered unfair since in Brazil there were also many more places with the same name.

The success caused her to become a presenter, soap opera actress, entrepreneur and beauty pageant organizer. She was even tempted by Playboy since at 40 she posed and at 56 she did it again in lingerie with her daughter Ticiane, who was 24. As in the United States the song was a bombshell, Oprah Winfrey invited Hêlo to her talk show. Personally, he also suffered from the brain injury of his young son that motivated the family to move from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo in 1978 to receive better care. Today it is still as beautiful as it was then.

  • music
  • Singers

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Learn more