Easy Lounge

tagStarted c. 1994Peak 2000–2012Last big hit still active

Located in 1 route

Easy Lounge is the softened modern extension of lounge aesthetics: warm, lightly jazzy, gently rhythmic, and highly playlistable without losing stylistic personality. It favors brushed or downplayed grooves, tasteful acoustic instruments, bossa undertones, quiet crooning, and upscale mood over retro camp.

History

This lane crystallized when post-1990s lounge revival energy met adult-album smoothness and a growing market for stylish but non-intrusive listening in cafés, hotel bars, and lifestyle media; Pink Martini, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, Stacey Kent, Michael Bublé, and Madeleine Peyroux helped define a modern lounge language that borrowed from standards, chanson, jazz-pop, and bossa while retaining easy listening’s old promise of civilized pleasure.

Defining artists

Essential listening

← Explore Easy Listening / Standards / Lounge

Sources

  • Wikipedia, “Lounge music”
  • Museum of Broadcast Communications, “Easy Listening/Beautiful Music Format”
  • The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music, “Other mainstreams: light music and easy listening, 1920–70.”