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From album
Os Mutantes
Os Mutantes · 1968 · Track 5
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The story behind
The first time I heard Baby, I got hooked on that guitar riff that sounds like a playful loop, almost childlike, but with an unexpected twist that makes it move in a meter that isn't the typical four-beat. It's one of those songs that, even though it lasts only three minutes, leaves the feeling of having experienced something longer because the rhythm takes you somewhere else without warning. The most curious thing is that this sound wasn't a coincidence: Os Mutantes were experimenting with blending the psychedelic rock coming from abroad with rhythms and melodies that sounded Brazilian, but without falling into the obvious. The result is a song that sounds like a party and an experiment at the same time, as if someone had taken a chord from Jovem Guarda and spun it in a centrifuge of new ideas.
They recorded it in 1968, at a time when the band didn't yet have a fixed name and played on TV shows like O Pequeno Mundo before the Jovem Guarda show even started. They weren't trying to sound like anyone else; they were searching for their own path, and on that debut album—which was first released on vinyl and later reissued on CD in 1992 and 2006—Baby stood out as one of those pieces that, years later, Rolling Stone magazine included among the hundred most important albums in Brazilian music. What's interesting isn't just that the track is short and catchy, but that this sound, which today seems so natural, was once a bold gamble: blending psychedelic with Brazilian without it sounding forced.