Singer Rita Lee, 75, passed away on Monday night (8). She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2021 and had been undergoing treatment since then.
The family confirmed her death on the singer’s social media. She died at her home in São Paulo, the capital of São Paulo state, late last night. “Surrounded by all the love and her family, as she always wished,” says the family’s statement.
The wake will be open to the public at the Planetarium of Ibirapuera Park on Wednesday (10), from 10 AM to 5 PM. “According to Rita’s wishes, her body will be cremated. The ceremony will be private. In this moment of deep sadness, the family thanks everyone for their affection and love,” the family states.
Rita Lee is survived by her husband, Roberto de Carvalho, and three children – Beto, 45; João, 44; and Antônio, 42.The Queen of Rock
With a career spanning six decades, the São Paulo native Rita Lee left a lasting mark with her irreverence, creativity, and compositions that helped introduce feminism into Brazilian society while openly addressing her struggle with drug use.
Although she considered her voice “weak and a bit out of tune,” “like that of a sparrow,” she enjoyed a long series of best-selling albums, including “Rita Lee” and “Rita Lee & Roberto de Carvalho,” and dozens of her songs were featured in widely watched telenovelas across Latin America.
“I wasn’t born to get married and wash underwear. I wanted the same freedom as the boys who played in the street with their toy cars,” she told the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stone in 2008. “When I entered music, I realized that ‘macho’ men reigned supreme. ‘Wow,’ I said, ‘this is where I’m going to show my fangs and literally give them a scolding.’”
She was a singer and songwriter praised for her versatility. She played at least five instruments: drums, guitar, piano, harmonica, and autoharp. She was also one of the first Brazilian female musicians to use an electric guitar.
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 “Lança Perfume” and considered her his favorite singer. She won a Latin Grammy for Best Portuguese Language Album in 2001 for her album “3001.”
Rita Lee gained fame with the group Os Mutantes starting in 1966. Colors and creativity, along with irony and irreverence, were trademarks of Rita from the beginning, evident in the extravagant outfits she showcased in her shows.
She was one of the first public figures in Brazil to popularize feminist themes with songs like “Mania de Você,” “Amor e Sexo,” and “Lança Perfume.”
As she grew older, she became vegan and an animal rights activist. For decades, she maintained her bright red hair and often wore matching contact lenses, a popular look she discarded in recent years by allowing her gray hair to grow.
In her autobiography, published the following year, she did not shy away from recounting the sexual abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of a man who came to fix her mother’s sewing machine.
She also referred to herself as a “rebel” and “hippie communist,” and wrote about sneaking out of her house through the windows as a teenager to play, being arrested during the dictatorship for possession of marijuana, and her multiple stints in rehabilitation clinics due to drugs and alcohol.
“I acknowledge that my best songs were written in an altered state, and so were my worst. I only regret my delay in realizing that the ‘medicine’ had expired a long time ago,” she wrote. “My generation suffered the claustrophobia of a brutal dictatorship, and using drugs was a way to breathe the air of freedom.”
Rita Lee also wrote about her own death, in her own style:
“When I die, I can imagine the words of affection from those who hate me. Some radio stations will play my songs without charging payola, colleagues will say I will be missed in the music world, who knows, they might even name a dead-end street after me. The fans, those sincere ones, will hold up covers of my albums and sing ‘Ovelha negra,’ the TVs must already have a summary of my journey ready to display in the news that day, and a little obituary note will surely appear in some magazines.”