Astrud Gilberto

Astrud Gilberto made a name for herself when she fortuitously sang on the 1964 US Top 5 smash "The Girl From Ipanema". This association with jazz and bossa nova godfathers brought her a lot of flak from critics quick to dismiss her "artless singing style" and "limited vocal range".
However, to the music listeners who succumbed to her vocal charms - and I sure am one of them - the most important aspect of Astrud Gilberto's singing was her ability to get the most out of everything song she performed. As a bonus, her music greatly benefitted from sumptuous Brazilian cum U. S. orchestrations.
Her honey-voiced delivery is forever able to transport me to warm summer days lazily spent relaxing on the beach of distant and warm faraway oceans, of effortelessly floating on turquoise tides under forever blue and sunny skies.
However, despite all their sweetness and joyful stance, her vocals cannot completely conceal an almost hidden undercurrent of melancholy which makes her appear most fragile.
In short, she epitomizes a romantic attitude to singing and this is probably what makes her music so endearing or, should I say, so addictive.
Musically, I find that she artfully created a link betwen Brazilian bossa nova and what became later known as American sunshine pop.
This compilation is one of the very best available at the moment with a very generous 25-track selection including most, if not all, of her well-known recordings. And these recordings prove commercially timeless too : this CD is ranked at # 602 in Amazon CD sales (at the time of writing.) This is remarkable for recordings issued some forty years ago.