I’ve got some old cassette tapes from when I was in Brazil. I would record stuff off the radio, and with no mixer or high-tech stuff, the results are pretty poor. No big deal. One song, however, I would like to track down and get a decent copy. I don’t write Portuguese, so can’t do a lyric search and don’t know the artist or title. However, I have enough specific info that I am betting a Doper can identify this with no problem.
Here goes: Song opens with a smoky groove (very reminiscent of MJ’s Billie Jean, now that I think about it), the female vocals start out kind of slow, there is an electric keyboard that builds up to a big flourish, then the song kind of shifts, the vocals pick up.
She is singing about “another woman” (ella), and how the singer is better than she is (mas espertu?). The last lines are something like, “You open your arms and we find/make peace/happiness”, something along those lines. No real bridge or chorus as such, just a couple verses.
The song has a short outro, intensifying as it goes, chock-full of that electric keyboard and 80’s electric keyboard effects, then kind of quickly fades out. Quick and dirty 3 minute pop song.
Song was hugely popular in late 1983/early 84. All over the radio, so this is nothing obscure.
The first person I thought of was Sade, but checking her Wikipedia page, boy was I way off. She’s Nigerian, not Brazilian, and it doesn’t look like she sang in Portuguese.
Okay, I haven’t heard that song in years (last cassette deck died in my Jeep before it broke down, and that’s been a while), but I think I nailed that description to a tee! Only off by a minute of time.
Also, between those two links, I think I can identify every song on all the tapes I made back then.
No problem. I love Brazilian music, but I have to train Pandora to skip all the bossa nova shit, which is the only genre the outside world knows about… “Girl from Ipanema” three times an hour. I’d never heard this song before, its nice.
