In 21st century, the song "Billie Bossa Nova" was released by Billie Eilish in 2021, [38] the Icelandic jazz pop singer Laufey released her hit song "From the Start" in 2023, with its bossa nova–infused rhythm, [39] and success BMF by SZA mixing with pop in 2025.
bossa nova, Brazilian popular music that evolved in the late 1950s from a union of samba (a Brazilian dance and music) and cool jazz. The music is in syncopated 2/4 time.
That, my friend, is the vibe of bossa nova—a Brazilian music style that’s smooth, sophisticated, and effortlessly cool. Whether you’ve heard “The Girl from Ipanema” at a café or caught its gentle rhythms in a movie, bossa nova has a way of making everything feel just a little more glamorous.
This history of Brazil's quiet musical revolution explains how the silky sound of bossa nova was exported to the rest of the world.
Bossa nova is a kind of Brazilian music that, with its ‘swaying’ feel and syncopated rhythms, is similar to samba. But it is calmer and gentler than samba, with more emphasis on melody and complex harmony, and less on percussion.
Bossa nova, which literally means “new wave,” was a blending of samba and jazz that rose out of a guitar school formed in Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana neighborhood in 1956.
Bossa nova is one of the most influential developments in Brazilian pop music. What began as a subgenre of samba is now its own voice, inspiring generations of Latin musicians all over the world.
Bossa Nova, Portuguese for ‘new trend’ or ‘new wave,’ emerged from Brazil in the mid-20th century as a sophisticated fusion of Latin American rhythms, European classical traditions, and American jazz harmonies.