The Person from Ipanema

I first heard "The Boy from Ipanema" on the Red Hot + Rio album, as sung by Crystal Waters. It struck me then, as now, as a modestly enjoyable quasi-techno experiment. The original version, "The Girl from Ipanema," a cool jazz meets bossa nova triumph, featured ethereal female vocals by Astrud Gilberto and an otherworldly sax solo by Stan Getz. A worldwide hit, it is beyond compare. As no cover version could possibly come near it for absolute perfection, it would be churlish to point out any failings (and while I am a curmudgeon, I'm no churl).

But now Diana Krall has released her own "The Boy from Ipanema" (I have ended up with five versions of this song on my iPod, all of which I've carefully considered whilst writing this post), and the time has come for me to register my objection. Yes, even to Ella Fitzgerald's rendering. The problem is not with the performances, but the lyrics.

The narrative of "the X from Ipanema" concerns a person admiring from a distance, with romantic longing of course, a person of the opposite sex walking along the Brazilian beachfront. In "The Girl," the singer describes a young man's longing in the third person. When Astrud Gilberto sings it, the tantalizing possibility emerges that she is the girl and in fact does notice her young male admirer; perhaps she is not oblivious to his affections after all.

But in "The Boy," the singer describes her own longing in the first person. All of a sudden, this lovely piece of gossamer turns into an overly intimate confessional. At the same time, the object of her affections becomes that much more distant: there is no hope whatsoever the singer's love will be reciprocated. The song is no longer romantic, just sad and, frankly, borderline depressing.

The irony, of course, is that the gender-switching of the "The Boy" version is completely unnecessary; need a point out that Astrud Gilberto was a woman? Henceforth, if the lady singers wish to take a crack at this classic, by all means have at it. But let it be "The Girl from Ipanema," and never again "The Boy."

And that's right, I really don't have anything better to think about.