Pop music is a mix between novelty and redundancy. In this dialectic game we can measure the relevance of an artist and its work. Rita Lee’s two first solo albums, ‘Build Up’ (1970) and ‘Hoje é o primeiro dia do resto de sua vida’ (Today is the first day of the rest of your life – 1972), can only be understood through this relationship.
You can not classify them. They are solo albums and, at the same time, complementary to Mutantes’s non-official discography.

In these two moments, Rita Lee was still part of the Mutantes. Even so, she launched herself into a solo project. So far, nothing wrong especially when we understand the option working as oxygen in their way.

But what really surprises here is that Rita Lee’s two first solo albums do not follow the obvious path taken by other artists when going from a band to a solo career, which is ‘an individual approach distant from the group’s proposes’. In Rita Lee’s case, it was the same innovative work – or an innovation under the same theme. Apart from the name and label stamped on the vinyl, Rita Lee by Mutantes, nobody would notice that they were actually listening to a solo record. Even so those are Rita Lee’s solo records, which would only exist as so. Therefore they deserve a comment with distance from Mutantes works. Especially if we compare ‘Build Up’ with the tropicalia-super-experimentalist ‘A Divina Comedia ou Ando Meio Desligado’; ‘Hoje é o primeiro dia do resto de sua vida’; and with the lysergic-psychedelic ‘Mutantes e seus cometas no Pais dos Bauretz’, launched at the same time. Are there two characters looking for an author? Or would be one character multiplied into two authors? Both albums’ blueprints are quite the same:

1) Basic core composers: Arnaldo Baptista, Rita Lee and Sergio Dias plus Liminha;
2) Arranged by Arnaldo and played by Mutantes.

‘Build Up’ was created as a soundtrack for Rodhia’s event ‘Build Up Electronic Fashion Show’, an important fashion show of those days called Fenit (Textile Industry International Fair). The album tells the story and moves of an artist heading to the stardom. There are songs by Arnaldo & Rita: ‘Sucesso, aqui vou eu’ (‘success here I go’ or ‘Build Up’) and ‘Macarrão com Linguiça e Pimentão’ (‘pasta with sausage and pimento). Elício Decário, who has collaborated in ‘A Divina Comedia’, ‘Ave Lucifer’ and ‘Hey Boy’, appears again in ‘Build Up’ and in partnership with Rita in ‘Hulla-Hulla’, ‘Tempo Nublado’ (Clouded Weather) and ‘Eu Vou me Salvar’ (I will save myself). He also contributed as solo writer in ‘Precisamos de Irmãos’ (We need brothers’) and ‘Prisioneira do Amor’ (Prisoner of Love). Arnaldo wrote ‘Calma’ (Stay Cool). ‘Build Up’ also brings the first solo songs arranged and/or written by Rita only: ‘Viagem ao Fundo de Mim’ (Inner Deep Trip) and ‘Jose’, a second version of George’s Moustaki’s original song, also recorded by tropicalist-bossa nova Nara Leão. ‘Build Up’ also houses the bolero Beatles inspired ‘And I love Her (And I love Him)’.

Build Up, the song, works as a script for the whole album. Although Build Up, the album, establishes the idea of ‘building up a public image’, its songs suggest ‘building the individual, intimate side of Rita’, an inner trip as showed in ‘Ao Fundo de Mim’ (Me in depth). Apart the non-sense ‘Macarrão com Linguiça e Pimentão’ (Pasta with sausage and pimento) and the lyricism of ‘Jose’ (Joseph), all other songs are written using the ‘I’ pronoun, with variations of its plural WE and unfolding into I + YOU. “I can even see/ my name flashing/ and the world clapping/ when I am singing/ when I am dancing/ I wanna be a star…/ I would say good bye/ to my dreams/ Success, here I go…/ I will fight/ I will get there…Hold on a minute/ what I really want/ is to escape from you…”

“In slow motion I will fly/ and feel your love…”
“I need songs and friends/ Love, flowers and shelter…”
“I am going to an island…”
“Where would you be, my love?/ Where would you be?”
“I will save myself/ I will save myself/ To guarantee my eternal life”

Marcelo Dolabela – Jul/Aug/ 2005).

1-Sucesso, Aqui Vou Eu
2-Calma
3-Viagem ao Fundo de Mim
4-Precisamos de Irmãos
5-Macarrão Com Linguiça e Pimentão
6-José
7-Hulla-Hulla
8-And I Love Her
9-Tempo Nublado
10-Prisioneira do Amor
11-Eu Vou Me Salvar