"Ms. Gilberto’s whispery voice, though limited in range and power, had a genuine ache and mystery to it, as well as the ability to evoke images of summers imagined or lost."

"'Her languid, affectless voice floated as lazily as a leaf on the Carioca breeze,' the journalist and author James Gavin wrote in the liner notes for the 2001 collection 'Astrud Gilberto Gold.'... Mr. Getz understood her appeal immediately. 'When I first heard Astrud,' he told a British journalist in 1964, 'I thought there was something innocent and demure in her voice — such an opposite to these chesty-voiced girls singing rock ‘n’ roll.' Her breathy brand of singing influenced scores of later artists, among them Sade; Tracey Thorn, of the duo Everything but the Girl; and Basia, who acknowledged that influence by writing a song titled 'Astrud.'"

From "Astrud Gilberto, 83, Dies; Shot to Fame With ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ It was the first song she ever recorded. And it played a key role in making the Brazilian sound known as bossa nova a phenomenon in the United States" (NYT).