Chico Buarque: Construção [ENDLESS HAPPINESS]

Why you'll love it

This edition is cut at 45 RPM for extra room in the grooves. Rolling Stone Brasil ranks Construção No. 3 among the greatest Brazilian albums, and named its title track the greatest Brazilian song of all time.

This edition

• Cut at 45 RPM
• Stereo mix

About the album

Look at the back cover of the original: the lyrics of the title track are set in three neat columns, stacked like bricks with gaps for mortar. That's Construção in a nutshell, an album built with an architect's care, by a songwriter who had just come home to Brazil after a spell living in Italy.

Roberto Menescal produced it, and the arrangements by Magro and Rogério Duprat give Buarque's samba and MPB a cinematic sweep of strings and brass. The title track follows a labourer's working day in verses that end on the same few words, reshuffled each time, as the orchestra climbs and climbs. "Cotidiano" turns daily routine into something hypnotic, "Deus Lhe Pague" is fierce and driving, and "Valsinha" and "Acalanto" are as tender as anything he wrote. Buarque's voice stays calm and conversational throughout, which makes the big orchestral moments land all the harder.

It sold around 140,000 copies in its first four weeks, which Philips said was the fastest it had ever shifted an LP. Philips were, one imagines, very pleased with their builder.

Also at Kops: more Chico Buarque on vinyl · browse World

Tracklist

Listen

On Endless Happiness (cat# HE71008), a reissue of the 1971 album.