Jobim, Moraes and Gimbel

Antônio Carlos Jobim wrote the music at his home near Rua Barão da Torre in Ipanema; the poet and diplomat Vinícius de Moraes wrote the Portuguese lyric. The melody began life for a musical comedy under a different working title before it became the song we know. Norman Gimbel, the American lyricist, supplied the separate English words that Astrud Gilberto sang — which is why the Portuguese and English versions are not translations of one another so much as two lyrics fitted to one tune.