[9] In 2000, the 1964 release of the song by Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto on Verve Records was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

[10] The song was composed for a musical comedy titled Dirigível ("Airship"), then a work in progress of Vinicius de Moraes.

While firmly rooted in bossa nova, "The Girl from Ipanema" includes influences from blues and Tin Pan Alley.

[11] During a recording session in New York with João Gilberto, Antônio Carlos Jobim and Stan Getz, the idea of cutting an English-language version came up.

A version by Gary Criss titled "The Girl From Ipanema / Brazilian Nights" from his album "Rio De Janeiro" reached number 19 in the Canadian RPM dance charts in August 1978.

The song was inspired by Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto (now known as Helô Pinheiro), a seventeen-year-old girl living on Montenegro Street in Ipanema.

In Revelação: a verdadeira Garôta de Ipanema ("Revealed: The Real Girl from Ipanema") Moraes wrote that she was "the paradigm of the young Carioca: a golden teenage girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling of youth that fades, of the beauty that is not ours alone—it is a gift of life in its beautiful and melancholic constant ebb and flow."

In a separate legal dispute, Astrud Gilberto sued Frito-Lay for trademark infringement for using the song in a TV advertisement for its baked potato chips.

She claims as a result to have earned trademark rights in the 1964 recording, which she contends the public recognizes as a mark designating her as a singer.

Such artists have included Julie London (1964 single), Peggy Lee (1964), Ella Fitzgerald and The Supremes (1965), Shirley Bassey (1966) and Eartha Kitt (1974).

Crystal Waters recorded her version in 1996 for the various artists Red Hot + Rio compilation and was later included on her 1998 greatest hits set.

The reason for "The Boy from Ipanema" version is partially caused by an awkward translation occurring when female vocalists sing: "But each time when she walks to the sea, she looks straight ahead not at HE."