Desafinado

"Desafinado" is bossa nova explaining itself, with a wink. The title means "off-key" or "slightly out of tune," and Antônio Carlos Jobim's song is a sly defense of imperfect singing — a lover insisting that if he sings flat, it's only because he sings from the heart, and besides, his beloved is just as guilty. In this celebrated Stan Getz and João Gilberto recording, the genius is in the understatement: Gilberto's guitar lays down that whispering, syncopated bossa pulse, his voice murmuring the Portuguese so softly it seems to float just above silence, while Getz's tenor saxophone answers with a warm, breathy, impossibly relaxed melody. Nobody is trying to impress you; the cool is total. Harmonically the song is anything but simple — Jobim's chromatic movement is sophisticated and unexpected, which is the joke embedded in the lyric about being out of tune. The emotional register is gentle, amused, intimate — a smile rather than a passion. Recorded as Brazilian bossa nova was conquering America, it became a defining track of the craze, and the Getz/Gilberto collaboration would soon yield "The Girl from Ipanema." It's perfect for a warm evening, a glass of wine, conversation that drifts — music that makes elegance sound effortless precisely because it's so artfully constructed.