Watching the Olympic opening ceremonies last night on Canadian television, I swear the announcer said (during the playing of “The Girl from Ipanema”) that it was the second most popular song ever.
Did I hear that correctly?
What’s first: “Yesterday?”
The most poppular song in the world is “Happy Birthday”. Sung (with translated lyrics if necessary) in virtually every country and language in the world. Very few of the 7-billion people on earth will escape wanting or having to sing it during their lifetime, and eveerybody knows the words.
And “Happy Birthday” is now public domain.
I can believe “Happy Birthday” coming in at number one.
I find it hard to believe that “Girl From Ipanema” is more “popular” than songs such as “Amazing Grace”, “Londonderry Air”, “Auld Lang Syne” or “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”.
I think you’d need a very specific definition of “popular” for that song to even make a list of the top 100 most popular songs. There are lots of ways to define popular: sales, airplay, frequency of singing, how often it turns up in lists of favourite songs, how many people know the words, how easily people recognise the song and so forth. And I do not believe that this song would make the top 100 by any of those criteria.
The tune is very popular, but I rarely hear the version with lyrics. The tune is used in elevators, call hols, and many other things.
And we’re talking international.
So, I am going say sounds like a definite possible maybe.
If we’re talking melody rather than song, it doesn’t count as a song. And if we’re talking melody it has even less chance of making a top 100 list. There are about a thousand classical pieces that would be more regularly played even as muzak.
I would imagine the international thing would also go heavily against it. The sung version would have to compete with any number of obscenely popular internationally translated or Latin hymns to even have a look in.
On looking around further, the original claim seems to have been that it is “the second most recorded popular song”. That’s a much more believable claim. Popular presumably means written after 1955, which rules out all the nursery rhymes, hymns, folk songs and so forth that are infinitely more popular and infinitely more recorded. And most recorded means that it has to have actually been made into a commercially released record/cd.
In other words, this song has been covered by more commercial artists on commercially released recordings than any other song written in the past ~60 years. I could buy that. While songs such as “Happy Birthday”, “Amazing Grace” or “Londonderry Air” have almost certainly been recorded more often, they aren’t “popular music” by virtue of being written before the mid 20th century.
I wouldn’t stake my life on this factoid being true, but it sounds plausible. Most popular song doesn’t sound plausible at all.
Hmm, Ok.
In terms of SDMB GQ answers it could only be considered the second most popular song in the world with a lot of qualifications as Blake has done, if it is at all. In the world of entertainment ‘Second Most Popular Song’ is a reasonable claim. It doesn’t mean much in determining to a scientific certainty what the second most popular song in the world is, but there’s no reasonable way that can be determined anyway. As long as it has some number associated with it that is only exceeded by one other song it’s a typical kind of show biz factoid that leaves a lot of room for interpretation and fantasy.
I guess it depends on how you define “most popular”. The song that has been *played *more times than any other is said to be this little ditty that you might have heard if you’ve ever vacationed in Anaheim or Orlando (or Paris, or Hong Kong, or a few other places)…
Oh God. I’m not clicking on that because I know EXACTLY what it is.
Yes.
[QUOTE=wikipedia]
It is believed to be the second most recorded pop song in history, after “Yesterday” by The Beatles.[3]
[/QUOTE]
The footnote cites the WSJ. So if you accept “most recorded” as a definition of “popular,” there you go.
ETA: I would have thought it was Stardust. I think it used to be.
The Girl from Ipanema has some of the worlds greatest musicians associated with it. Antonio Carlos Jobim, Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto. Its just us english speaking pop and rock fans who arent familiar with them. Its us in this case.
It would have been even better if they could have dialed back Getz a little bit. Mellow song, then he comes blasting in.
Ah. Well, there ya’ go.
I believe it’s the most popular song with the word “Ipanema” in the title, but I may be wrong.
Did they also play ‘Rio’ by Duran Duran?
I think the meaning of the claim arises from sifting out all “popular music”, as distinct from other genres (classical, folk, dance, etc.), being roughly defined as “short vocal songs of contemporary origin created to fit into a certain mass media ‘hit parade’ presentation”. Songs of that category or genre were then evaluated on the basis of global recognizability.
It doesn’t mean “the most popular song”, it means the most recognizable song from within an arbitrary genre of “popular songs”. The methodology of the survey and selection of the sample to determine that would be no doubt be consistent with standard click-bait objectivity.
I have finally tracked down the source of the claim: "According to Performing Songwriter magazine, it is the second-most-recorded pop tune ever, surpassed only by “Yesterday”. This quote coming from a a Wall Street Journal article, The Elusive Girl From Ipanema - WSJ
Googling “most popular song” yields dozens, if not hundreds, of equally credible and genuine lists. If one starts out with “I wonder how popular ‘Girl from Ipanema’ is” and then performs a search for just that specifically (say, for example, if the Rio Olympics are currently hot news and you need a fresh lead for the morning edition), one can sort through dozens of similar lists, and then quote the one that lists it the highest. The bread and butter of empirical research by the media/industrial complex.
I think you’re vastly overestimating how popular these last four songs are outside of the English-speaking world. I only know the melodies of the last two. Just the melodies, mind you, not the lyrics. “Amazing Grace” and “Londonderry Air” are titles that I recognize but I have absolutely no idea of what they sound like. It’d probably ring a bell if I heard them but honestly, right now I couldn’t hum them. I’ve no problem believing that “The Girl From Ipanema” is better known worldwide.
Heresy ! Getz’s solo on that song works great. On the whole album, actually. Take O Grande Amor, another mellow song, where he starts his solo softly then blasts a few anguished repeating notes that resolve in a resigned whisper. Pure magic. 
Well, if you want a random data point, i looked up “girl from Ipanema” on YouTube because of this thread. I recognize the tune, but i had no idea it had lyrics.