Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmarreck | Hacker News Reader

She got paid $120 for her voice work in Girl from Ipanema.

I think that may be the only money she ever saw from that. That is incredible, and the other guys who took credit for this song basically made a fortune off her.

View on HN

Girl from Ipanema (Garota de Ipanema) was composed by Tom Jobim, one of the greatest Brazilian composers, and written by Vinícius de Moraes, one of the greatest Brazilian poets. João Gilberto, another one of our greatest musicians, also contributed to the song. It was recorded by different singers before the English version with Astrud was ever recorded, and the most famous version in Brazil by far is sung by Tom Jobim himself.

Astrud is actually not that well known in Brazil - she's much more famous abroad. I'm not sure who the "guys who took credit" are supposed to be but I never thought of Garota de Ipanema as being Astrud's song or anything like that. Not to say whatever happened to her wasn't unfair, of course, but her interpretation of the song is one among many. The song is Vinícius and Tom's.

Unless you don’t know that; when I listen to it, that song is all about her.

I totally get it, but the song is also very famous in Brazil and not because of her.

That doesn’t mean the performer who made the version that is known worldwide should not be rewarded properly by it. I am not sure the debate has took this turn. Because the music is known in Brazil with different performers, it attenuates the cheap payment she got for the English version.

The article states that she avoided performing in Brazil because she felt it didn’t treat her well. Taking from the Brazilians in this thread, it checks.

I'm Brazilian and have nothing against Astrud. The point however is that she's simply now well known in Brazil. She became famous as the singer for the English version of Girl from Ipanema. In Brazil this song has portuguese lyrics and is sung by other interpreters. That is, I imagine, why she wasn't as well received in Brazil as in the US and other countries.

The point is not that she wasn’t as famous in Brazil. The point is that she was paid only $120 after performing the version of the song that became famous worldwide.

Also, the article states that she consciously avoided performing in Brazil.

So what? at the time they payed her nobody knew it will be a huge hit, she was an unknown singer who got a chance to sing a song created by famous and talented creators of her home country. So they payed her a payday salary of a singer. She probably got payed more after that for live performances.

Is it fair that others capture all of the rewards of something she helped create?

What's wrong with a little bit of profit sharing?

Right now, writers in Hollywood are striking because the streaming medias treat them as mere day laborers, denying those writers the residuals they'd rightfully receive for the same work published by any other medium.

The reality is that even Tom Jobim didn't make much money from this song. He later said in an interview that the contract he signed gave most of the money to the American recording company and the writer of the English lyrics. He received only a small amount of the profits from this song.

TIL, thanks. Disappointed, but not surprised.

> That doesn’t mean the performer who made the version...

She didn't make it. She sang a part of it. And it isn't as if they knew how successful this recording would become.

I'm not Brazilian, but I'm a fan of bossa nova. The way some people are talking in this thread as if the entire song was created by Astrud seems absurd. The position completely erases the work done by the men who pioneered bossa nova as a genre. Do you actually listen to this music? What do you do when listening to this album? Do you fast forward past the lengthy saxophone solos?

Labor is the source of all wealth. Maybe they should get some fraction of the profits.

I call my radical proposal Profit Sharing.

Maybe all compensation should include some stock.

I support any and all efforts to get our gini coefficient back down to 0.35 or lower. Worker-directed social enterprises, co-ops, trust busting, tax enforcement, universal healthcare, universal basic income, repeated radical cashectomies of the 1%, name & shame... Whatever works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

I am not one of those people saying Astrud is the main responsible for creating the song.

My position is that her contribution deserved a portion of the profits the song generate larger than $120. I think it’s fair that she should earn more directly from it, even acknowledging that the song kickstarted her great career and was the foundation of a lot of profits in the future.

I am not saying it was illegal or the $120 was paid on bad faith at the time of recording. I am saying that after the song becoming a worldwide hit, she deserved to earn more. It might not have been illegal for her to earn only $120, but it was unfair in my opinion.

‘Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto is the girl from Ipanema.’

https://web.archive.org/web/20131231001337/http://www.jobim....

https://www.fatosdesconhecidos.com.br/conheca-a-musa-que-ins...

Nope, the singer is watching her walk down the sidewalk.

How things are viewed in Brazil might be one thing.

Worldwide? She's the one. Her version of the song is the song. Nobody outside Brazil has ever heard of anyone else. The producer who took all the money for her performance of it robbed her.

I'd never heard this woman's name before, yet I know the two who actually created this album. I'm from the US.

You're posing a disgusting assertion as a tourist to this music, based on some article you read on the internet.

It's not "her" version of the song, it's just a version that she sung (some) of the lyrics on. She didn't compose the song, she isn't performing it a capella (there's a band including some famous musicians like Stan Getz or Tom Jobim), she didn't compose or translate the lyrics, she didn't compose the sung part. She certainly isn't singing the saxophone solo. It's absurd to attribute the success of the song solely to her. Should she have gotten more? Absolutely! But she's ultimately just a minor part of the song.

It's not "nobody" because I've never been to South America, but I know the song well, sung by various male performers, or just the tune without a singer, and I'd never heard of Astrud Gilberto.

I don't think that "session musicians" should have an automatic right to royalties.

They don't even play it the same (as it was originally recorded) in most westernized versions. What a great song and her voice is iconic, but if you haven't seen the musical key deconstruction and commentary by Adam Neely, it's worth a watch.

https://youtu.be/OFWCbGzxofU

As he says, the way short phrases of Girl from Ipanema are used in American pop culture, "It's auditory shorthand for light frivolous background music". Even though it's anything, but that.

I knew most of those things, and I apologize for apparently suggesting that she deserved credit in lieu of those guys, because she did not. I was just suggesting that given how well the song did in English speaking countries AFTER her participation, $120 seems a travesty.

No. It was their song, they deserve the bulk of the credit for it. It was already a hit performed and written in Portuguese before the English version came out. She happened to be in the studio as the wife of one of the musicians when they decided to do an English version, and she was the only one who could speak English among the women there. America was ready for Bossa Nova and the song would have been a hit regardless of who raised their hand that day.

Plus, her entire career was launched with that song.

How much money was there from the album sales even? If a bulk of the remuneration comes from touring like it does today, it's not clear to me how they could even compensate her beyond what she was "given" by becoming a huge star due to the album.

I guess it would be nice to think that everyone involved in something successful becomes fabulously wealthy due to it, even regardless of their original deal, but shouldn't it go the other way too then? If the album flopped, would it be okay if they demanded she give back the $120?

I actually never stated that they didn’t deserve the bulk of the credit, I just tried to state that she deserved more than $120

maybe some form of equity should be part of every compensation

The "other guys" as in Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto (her husband)? You write this as if they were nothing to the song.

I didn’t mean it to come across that way, I just wasn’t sure of the spelling of their names and I didn’t have time to look it up when I commented

The Independent covered her story in depth a year ago.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/featu...

She got her whole career from that, jump-started by a Grammy, and died a millionaire.

One of the other guys was her husband, so she probably enjoyed some of that money.

And she was getting some strange on the side with one of the other guys (Stan Getz).

Her voice totally made that song. RIP.

Equal credit goes to one and only Stan Getz

Reply on news.ycombinator.com