Gal Costa - Aquarela Do Brasil (1980)

Recorded at the height of the MPB movement in 1980, AQUARELA DO BRASIL is the singer Gal Costa's tribute to the famed Brazilian songwriter Ary Barroso, the author of the celebrated title track as well as many others not as well known outside his native land. While the album bears slight traces of the neo-disco production that would soon come to plague Brazilian pop music in the '80s, it is mostly a wholly successful showcase for Gal Costa's extraordinary voice and interpretive abilities. About this time, the singer was reaching her full stature as Brazil's premier pop singer, her only serious rival being Elis Regina, who had recorded her own very different, celebrated version of "Aquarela Do Brasil." Many of these compositions were actually written in the '40s and '50s, but in Gal's capable hands, songs like "Tu" and "Inquietacao" sound like fully contemporary pop of the '80s and beyond. Longtime collaborator and peer Caetaeno Veloso joins in a duet on the samba-inflected "No Tabuleiro da Baiana," also known as "Bahia."
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