Brazil's Rock Queen, Rita Lee, dies at 75

Rita Lee Jones, Brazil’s million-selling “Queen of Rock” who gained an international following through her colourful and candid style and such hits as “Ovelha Negra,” “Mania de Voce” and “Now Only Missing You,” has died at 75.

Otherwise known as Rita Lee, she died at her home in Sao Paulo on Monday evening, according to a statement posted to her official Instagram account.

Her cause of death wasn’t immediately disclosed. She had retired from stage performances in the early 2010s in what she later attributed to physical frailty, and was diagnosed in 2021 with lung cancer, though her son announced a year later that she had defeated the illness.

With a career spanning six decades, the Sao Paulo native left a lasting mark with her irreverence, creativity and compositions containing messages that helped introduce Brazilian society to the idea of equality, while also candidly addressing her struggles with drug abuse.

“When I got into music, I realised that the 'machos' reigned absolute, even more in rock music. ‘Wow’, I said, ‘this is where I’m going to let my fangs out and, literally, give them a hard time,’” she told the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stone in 2008.

She was a singer and songwriter praised for her versatility, playing at least five instruments: drums, guitar, piano, harmonica and autoharp. She was also one of the first Brazilian musicians to use electric guitar.

Rita Lee's global fame

Eventually, her popularity extended beyond Brazil. She performed in Portugal, England, Spain, France and Germany. In 1988, the British newspaper Daily Mirror revealed that then-Prince Charles admired her song “Lanca Perfume” and considered her his favourite singer. She won a Latin Grammy in the Best Portuguese Language Album category in 2001, for her album “3001."

In an interview with the television program Fantastico in 2020, she explained that physical frailty had prompted her to leave the stage eight years earlier.

“Getting old, for me, was a surprise, because I’ve never been old in my life,” she told the show. “I was left wanting to live my old age away from the stage, without sharing it with the public.”

Three days of mourning

A public wake will be held at the planetarium in Sao Paulo on May 10, according to the Instagram post.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared three days of mourning and lamented the loss of “one of the biggest and most brilliant names in Brazilian music.” He praised on his official Twitter profile “an artist ahead of her time,” and her sense of humor.

She is survived by her three children and her husband, with whom she shared a 44-year musical partnership. In 2021, they released a new song, Change, together, and a remix of some of the singer’s biggest hits.