Brasil
by EOB

Album: Earth (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • In 2011 Ed O'Brien upped sticks from England and moved with his family to Brazil, where they lived for a year on a farm near Ubatuba. He told Q Magazine it was something he'd planned for a long time.

    "In 2007 I said to everybody in Radiohead, in five-years-time, I want to go and live in Brazil with my family for a year," O'Brien said. "I've had amazing experiences with you traveling all over the world. I want to go and have an amazing experience with my family living in Brazil."

    O'Brien released this song as the lead single from Earth, his debut album under his EOB moniker. The carnival the Radiohead guitarist experienced during his time in Brazil served as inspiration for the pulsating cut.
  • O'Brien told NME about the track, which transforms from a plaintive folk strum into a dance banger.

    "The song 'Brasil' is the record in a nutshell. It's got this melancholy and intimacy at the start of it, but then goes into this joyful, beautiful, colourful place. There are moments of loneliness, sadness and withdrawal on there, but there are times of celebrating being a human being. I didn't want to make a record that was just melancholic. Melancholy is somewhere that you can slip into quite easily, whereas joy is the hardest thing to do on record. It's hard to have fun. It isn't something you can fake."
  • O'Brien's Radiohead bandmate Colin Greenwood plays bass on the track.
  • Here are a few more songs inspired by the South American country of Brazil.

    "Brazil" by Declan McKenna

    "The Coffee Song" by Osibisa

    "The Girl From Ipanema" by Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto

    "Copacabana (At The Copa)" by Barry Manilow

    "Only a Dream in Rio" by James Taylor.

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