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)
Triste
Sergio Mendes Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Na dor cruel de uma paixão
Triste é saber que ninguém
Pode viver de ilusão
Que nunca vai ser nunca vai dar
O sonhador tem que acordar
Tua beleza é um avião
Que pára pra te ver passar
Só pra se maltratar
Triste é viver na solidão
Tua beleza é um avião
Demais p'rum pobre coração
Que pára pra te ver passar
Só pra se maltratar
Triste é viver na solidão
Triste by Sergio Mendes is a melancholic and reflective song about the pain of unrequited love and the struggle of letting go. The opening lyrics, "Triste é viver na solidão / Na dor cruel de uma paixão" (Sad is living in solitude / In the cruel pain of a passion) expresses the emotional turmoil of being alone and experiencing the hurt of a love that remains unfulfilled. The singer then goes on to lament the futility of living in illusions and never achieving one's dreams: "Que nunca vai ser nunca vai dar / O sonhador tem que acordar" (That it's never going to happen / The dreamer has to wake up).
The song continues with a description of the object of the singer's unrequited love, whose beauty is compared to a plane that is too much for the singer's poor heart to handle: "Tua beleza é um avião / Demais p'rum pobre coração" (Your beauty is an airplane / Too much for a poor heart). The singer finds himself unable to resist the allure of the beloved, even though it only causes him more pain: "Que pára pra te ver passar / Só pra se maltratar" (That stops to watch you pass by / Only to hurt himself). The song ends on the same note of sadness and despair as it began, with the line "triste é viver na solidão" (sad is living in solitude) repeated twice, as if to emphasize the inescapable nature of the pain of unrequited love.
Line by Line Meaning
Triste é viver na solidão
It is sad to live in loneliness
Na dor cruel de uma paixão
Enduring the brutal pain of unrequited love
Triste é saber que ninguém
It's sad to realize that no one
Pode viver de ilusão
Can live on illusions
Que nunca vai ser nunca vai dar
That it never will be, never will come
O sonhador tem que acordar
A dreamer must wake up
Tua beleza é um avião
Your beauty is an airplane
Demais p'rum pobre coração
Too much for a humble heart
Que pára pra te ver passar
That stops to watch you go by
Só pra se maltratar
Just to hurt itself
Triste é viver na solidão
It is sad to live in loneliness
Contributed by Max M. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Fifer McGee
Simply beautiful and so relaxing on such a hot day.
hndrx9
One of my favorite songs of all time!!
Erik dusant Marquéz García
Amo sus canciones gran maestro Sergio un saludo desde México ❤️
Amy Lovendaal
I'm enjoying every second of this music !
Thank you so much for uploading, Sergio Mendes !
Daniel Duenez
The music my parents raised me on, the best of the best! No better groove than bossa nova
matthew spratt
Pure gold
Alan Philip Watson
Great cover of Jobim's standard 🥰
Tiny Dancer
Written by the great Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Daniel
You mean the greatest Tom Jobim!
Tiny Dancer
@Daniel Absolutely!! I was fortunate to see him at an outdoor concert. His son was in the band also. I've also seen Sergio Mendes and Herb Alpert and his wife Lani Hall several times in concert.