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People Who Are The Inspirations For The Most Beautiful Songs Ever Written

| Avi Shekhtman | This article originally appeared on our sister site: history-a2z.com
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Would it surprise you to learn that many of your best loved songs were inspired by actual living breathing people? Maybe not; after all, even the greatest artist doesn’t exist in a vacuum. So let’s take a little journey together and uncover the stories behind the songs. The  faces behind the hits. Some, as you might imagine, were lovers. Others were loved from afar. And a few might be a little harder to characterize. A few of the musicians were bold enough to use the person’s real name in the song, while others were a bit more circumspect. But each of them created something truly memorable.

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Every artist needs a muse, an inspiration, someone or something to get the creative juices flowing. Not just music, of course. From Michelangelo’s David to the Doors’ Come on Baby Light My Fire, you can bet that there was flesh and blood behind the art. So come. Read on, and take a trip to the past. You will be in for a few surprises!

“The Girl from Ipanema” by Astrud Gilberto with João Gilberto and Stan Getz (1964)

Ipanema is a chic seaside neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 1962, a pair of songwriters were sitting in an Ipanema café and noticed day after day as Heloisa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, known to posterity as Helô Pinheiro would walk by on her way to the beach. Sometimes she would even come into the café to buy her mother cigarettes. Only seventeen years old, but beautiful enough to inspire a timeless song and win the heart of every man who saw her.

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The bossa nova jazz song’s original Portuguese title was “Menina que Passa” (The Girl Who Passes By). It is about the wistful longing for the passing beauty of youth. The song immortalized its subject; Pinhero would go on to become a model, boutique owner, and eventually a Brazilian Playboy Playmate in 1987. In 2003, at the age of 59, she was Playboy Playmate again alongside her daughter. “The Girl from Ipanema” was a worldwide Grammy-winning hit in the 1960s both in the original Portuguese as well as in its probably better known English version. It has gone on to become one of the most covered songs in history, with literally dozens of versions floating around. These include instrumental tracks, gender-reversed versions, and various comic parodies.

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 The Wisdom Segment

  • I The egg of a penguin is the smaller in size to any other bird species. This comparison does not have to do with the size of the parents. Their eggshell makes up 10-16% of the weight of parent penguin. This allows for the reduction in breakage during incubation in a rough environment.
  • II The color a penguin has is one of the survival tools for it. When they need to hide from predators hovering over them or on the ground, their black back keep them in the ocean\'s dark color. While they are in the water, the white color on their belly matches against the light sky and also in the snow. This act is called countershading.
  • III The emperor penguins and king penguins lay a single egg compared to most penguin species that lay two eggs. These species ( king and emperor) do not build a nest for their eggs. They simply keep their eggs warm under their feet, covering it with the brood pouch, a flap of their skin.
  • IV Cougar mothers usually give birth to twins and triplets, and they give birth several times. There are  few wild cats that give birth to one cub at a time. Cougar mothers, however, are usually only able to raise one of six cubs to maturity, others die.
  • V Although cougars weigh an average of 54 kg to 90 kg , and are 9 ft in length, their sizes are still dependent on their environment. The closer they are to the equator, the smaller they will be, and vice-versa.
  • VI Cougars are one of the few flesh eating wild animals that do not finish their meals at once. When they kill a prey, they take some of the animal carcass to a safe place where they can go back to eat it when they're hungry again.

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