Astrud Gilberto, who has died aged 83, became the best known female bossa nova singer, thanks to her cool, breathy and delightful treatment of The Girl from Ipanema, a song that sold more than a million copies when it was released as a single in 1964, and introduced the laid-back, sophisticated Brazilian musical style to a vast new audience across the US and the rest of the world.
Gilberto did not write the song, and had not previously been rated as a key figure in the bossa nova movement, as she had never sung professionally before. But that one hit record changed everything. She became the impossibly cool voice, and face, of what would become a new global pop music fashion.
