Garota de Ipanema

The girl was real. Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, a 17-year-old who lived on Montenegro Street in Ipanema, walked past the Veloso bar-café every day, sometimes stopping in to buy cigarettes for her mother and leaving to a chorus of wolf whistles. When Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes wrote the song in 1962, they remembered how it felt to watch her go by. Jobim composed the melody on the piano in his new house on Rua Barão da Torre, and Moraes wrote the words in Petrópolis. It began life as "Menina que Passa", meant for a musical comedy Moraes never finished. Pery Ribeiro made the first commercial recording, but the world heard it through a New York session with João Gilberto, Jobim and Stan Getz. When someone suggested an English version, João's wife Astrud was the only Brazilian in the room who spoke English well. It was her recording debut. Her plain, untrained voice became the sound of the hit, which won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965. She was paid 120 dollars, uncredited and without royalties. It is believed to be the second most recorded pop song in history, after "Yesterday". The real girl, later known as Helô Pinheiro, even won a court case when the composers' heirs objected to her naming a boutique after the song. At the 2016 Rio Olympics the mascots were named Vinicius and Tom, and the tune still carries a whole idea of Rio.