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Pizzicato Five
The Girl From Ipanema
A Tribute To Antonio Carlos Jobim (2000, compilation)

If you like your old chestnuts old and, uh, unroasted, you probably won’t like this version of the Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim classic “The Girl From Ipanema.” You’ll probably think more along the lines of James Rogol, who called this Pizzicato Five effort “an abomination of what used to be ‘The Girl from Ipanema.’ ” If you know Pizzicato Five at all, though, you won’t hear anything you probably didn’t already expect from the seminal Shibuya-kei band. Delightfully quirky and with more than a hint of faux retro kitsch, the P5 version is only an abomination if you grew up to love the original and can’t stand to see it changed at all. Which isn’t to say the original is bad, but rather that this jazzy, upbeat remake should be considered on its own terms. If that puts me on the same side as Blueshammer, well, that’s just the way things go sometimes.

4 Responses

P5 was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. It’s a tragedy they are no longer performing.

I agree with Kevin. When I first heard Pizzicato Five’s cover of ‘Girl from Ipamema’, I fell in love with them all over again.

Most of my CD purchases lately are jazz recordings, so I am no stranger to songs being radically reinterpreted. That is half the point of jazz anyway.

This particular cover could be described as trying to push a square peg into a round hole. It just doesn’t work. This sounds like Jobim with the hiccups.

For a better modern pop/electronic cover of an Antonio Carlos Jobim song, try Corcovado by Everything But the Girl. Truly excellent.

I just stumbled upon this song. Found it pretty interesting, the accent adds a lot to the song for me. I do like this hip, jazzy version though.
Bossa Nova 3003 still remains my favorite P5, but this takes a cloase second.