Sérgio Santos Mendes (born Niteroi, 11 February 1… Read Full Bio ↴See Sérgio Mendes.
Sérgio Santos Mendes (born Niteroi, 11 February 1941) is a Brazilian musician. Born the son of a physician in Niteroi, Brazil, Mendes attended the local conservatory with hopes of becoming a classical pianist. As his interest in jazz grew, he started playing in nightclubs in the late-1950s just as bossa nova, a jazz-inflected derivative of samba, was taking off. Mendes played with Antonio Carlos Jobim (regarded as a mentor), and many U.S. jazz musicians who toured Brazil.
Mendes formed the Sexteto Bossa Rio and recorded Dance Moderno in 1961. Touring Europe and the United States, Mendes recorded albums with Cannonball Adderly and Herbie Mann and played Carnegie Hall. Mendes moved to the U.S. in 1964 and cut two albums under the Brasil '65 group name with Capitol Records and Atlantic Records. When sales were tepid, he replaced his Brazilian born vocalist Wanda Sa with the distinctive voice of Chicago native Lani Hall (who learned Mendes' Portuguese material phonetically) and switched to Herb Alpert's A&M label and released Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66. (Hall would later marry Alpert). The album ultimately went platinum based largely upon the success of the single Mas Que Nada and the personal support of Alpert, with whom Mendes toured regularly. Though his early singles with Brasil '66 (most notably Mas Que Nada) met with some success, Mendes really burst into mainstream prominence when he performed the Oscar nominated Burt Bacharach/Hal David song "The Look of Love" on the Academy Awards telecast in March 1968. Brasil '66's version of the song quickly shot into the top 10, eclipsing Dusty Springfield's version from the soundtrack of the movie, and Mendes spent the rest of 1968 enjoying consecutive top 10 and top 20 hits with his follow-up singles, "The Fool on the Hill" and "Scarborough Fair." Though he continued to enjoy adult contemporary chart successes with Brasil '66 through 1971, he would not experience the mainstream chart hits he enjoyed in 1968 until his comeback album in 1983 generated the biggest single of his career, "Never Gonna Let You Go." However, from 1968 on, Mendes was arguably the biggest Brazilian star in the world, enjoying immense popularity worldwide and performing in venues as varied as stadium arenas and the White House, where he gave concerts for both President Johnson and President Nixon.
Mendes' career in the U.S. stalled in the mid-70s, but he remained very popular in South America and Japan. (This disparity became a Seinfeld in-joke.) His two albums with Bell Records in 1973 and 1974, followed by several for Elektra from 1975 on, found Mendes continuing to mine the best in American pop music and post-Bossa writers of his native Brazil, while forging new directions in soul with collaborators like Stevie Wonder, who wrote Mendes' R&B-inflected minor hit, "The Real Thing." In 1983, he rejoined Alpert's A&M records and enjoyed huge success with a self-titled album and several follow-up albums, all of which received considerable adult contemporary airplay with charting singles. By the time Mendes released his Grammy-winning Elektra album Brasileiro in 1992, he was the undisputed master of pop-inflected Brazilian jazz. The late-1990s lounge music revival brought retrospection and respect to Mendes' oeuvre, particularly the classic Brasil '66 albums. He has released over thirty-five albums, and still plays his bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk. His newest album, Timeless released in 2006, featured Chali 2na of Jurassic 5, will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas, Q-Tip, Justin Timberlake, and Pharoahe Monch.
(Text taken in whole from the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergio_Mendes on March 30, 2006)
Real Life
Sergio Mendes Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Where you're fool enough to think you're wise
Feeling so sure
Love will endure
Like a shining star against the night
We saw love as clear as black and white
But that's more than dreams can ever do
Promises made
Easily fade
And there's nothing left to do or say
We just close the door and walk away
'Cause in real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
In real life
Oh, in real life
Now, I've seen the light and you know the score
Love can't blind us like it did before
Swear we won't make
The same old mistake
But no matter how we try to be
We're just seeing what we want to see
And in real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
I real life
Oh, in real life
In real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
I real life
Oh, in real life
'Cause in real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
I real life
Oh, in real life
Sérgio Mendes's song "Real Life" talks about the illusion of love in a world full of beautiful lies. The song portrays how we sometimes get carried away by false promises, and we believe that love can conquer all. The lyrics depict the struggle between reality and dreams, where promises made easily fade away without any explanation or excuse. The line "We're just seeing what we want to see" shows how love can blind us and make us ignore the blatant reality.
The chorus highlights the difference between what we hope for and what actually happens in real life. The promise of a dream is always alluring, but we have to accept the hard truth and strive to overcome it. The phrase "struggle in between" in the chorus underlines how hard it is to accept the reality while still holding onto the idea of a dream. We have to learn from our mistakes and move past them rather than repeating them.
Overall, the song is about accepting the reality of love and relationships instead of holding onto a dream that cannot come true. It's about being honest with ourselves and seeing things as they are, rather than how we want them to be.
Line by Line Meaning
We lived in a world of beautiful lies
We used to live in a world where everything seemed beautiful, but it was all built on lies.
Where you're fool enough to think you're wise
In that world, we were foolish enough to believe that we were wise and knew what was best.
Feeling so sure, Love will endure
Despite the lies, we felt confident that love would survive anything.
Like a shining star against the night, We saw love as clear as black and white
Love was so bright and beautiful that it stood out like a shining star against the darkness of the world, and it seemed so clear and simple to us.
We looked to a dream to carry us through, But that's more than dreams can ever do
We relied on our dreams to give us hope and guidance, but dreams can't actually solve our problems or carry us through difficult times.
Promises made, Easily fade
Promises of love and commitment can be made easily, but they can just as easily be broken and forgotten.
And there's nothing left to do or say, We just close the door and walk away
When love fades, there's often nothing left to say or do but to end things and move on, shutting the door on what once seemed so important.
'Cause in real life, It's never what it seems
In the reality of the world, things are never as simple or clear as they seemed in our dreams and illusions.
We struggle in between, The hard truth, And the promise of a dream
We are caught in between the harsh reality of life and the promise of our dreams, trying to reconcile the two.
Now, I've seen the light and you know the score, Love can't blind us like it did before
After going through failed love and difficult times, we now see things more clearly and understand that love can't be idealized or blindly trusted like we used to.
Swear we won't make, The same old mistake
We vow to ourselves not to make the same mistakes with love that we made in the past.
But no matter how we try to be, We're just seeing what we want to see
Despite our attempts to be realistic and objective, we are still prone to seeing only what we want to see in love and relationships.
Contributed by Vivian B. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Ukin Pasdev
Lirik Real life
Sergio mendes
We lived in a world of beautyful lies
Where you're fool enough to think you're wise
Feeling so sure
Love will endure
Like a shining star against the night
We saw love as clear as black and white
We looked to a dream to carry us through
But that's more than dreams can ever do
Promises made
Easily fade
And there's nothing left to do or say
We just close the door and walk away
'Cause in real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
In real life
Oh, in real life
Now, I've seen the light and you know the score
Love can't blind us like it did before
Swear we won't make
The same old mistake
But no matter how we try to be
We're just seeing what we want to see
And in real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
I real life
Oh, in real life
In real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
I real life
Oh, in real life
'Cause in real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
I real life
Oh, in real life
Ukin Pasdev
Lirik Real life
Sergio mendes
We lived in a world of beautyful lies
Where you're fool enough to think you're wise
Feeling so sure
Love will endure
Like a shining star against the night
We saw love as clear as black and white
We looked to a dream to carry us through
But that's more than dreams can ever do
Promises made
Easily fade
And there's nothing left to do or say
We just close the door and walk away
'Cause in real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
In real life
Oh, in real life
Now, I've seen the light and you know the score
Love can't blind us like it did before
Swear we won't make
The same old mistake
But no matter how we try to be
We're just seeing what we want to see
And in real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
I real life
Oh, in real life
In real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
I real life
Oh, in real life
'Cause in real life
It's never what it seems
In real life
We struggle in between
The hard truth
And the promise of a dream
In real life
Oh, it's never what it seems
I real life
Oh, in real life
Russell Parker
Jammed to this in the car on my Pops mix tapes. Great guitar solo too
Gito Rolies
Salut... Ahmad Dani emang jeli milih lagu buat mulan.... Lagu lama Tp menjadi moderen 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
raulantonio65
Beautiful song.
Bright Liu
He is Legend. Omg his voice is very amazing... Real life...................
Rosa Azon Portales
El curro que me ha dado encontrar esta canción teniendo como única referencia la parte de la letra que he conseguido memorizar con mi pobre inglés al oírla en una radio local,pero ha merecido la pena,que pedazo de estribillo,voces y arreglos perfectos,nadie lo diría escuchando el arranque de la canción.
Kim Yoder
Oh Joe you can sing to me any time. His vocals on this song are perfection!
Suzanne Fagan
Loved this song when I was young and still do. Thank you Sergio.
Susan Dawson-Cook
Why isn't this song available for download? It was always one of my favorites!
B J
Susan Dawson-Cook it sucks you that it’s not on iTunes I love this song too!