Mood music
| Easy listening | |
|---|---|
| Other names | |
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | 1940s, United States |
| Typical instruments | String instrument |
| Derivative forms | |
Easy listening (sometimes known as mood music) is a popular music genre and radio format that was most popular during the 1950s to 1970s. It is related to middle-of-the-road (MOR) music and encompasses instrumental recordings of standards, hit songs and popular non-rock vocals. It was differentiated from the mostly instrumental beautiful music format by its variety of styles, including a percentage of vocals, arrangements and tempos to fit various day parts during the broadcast day.
Easy listening music is often confused with elevator music provided by Muzak Holdings and other music services for malls and elevators, or lounge music, but while it was popular in some of the same venues it bore only modest resemblance to the background sound of this kind of music.
A significant portion of easy listening music is purely instrumental and included some big band and orchestral arrangements of standards, themes from movies, bossa nova hits and small instrumental ensembles playing instrumental versions of popular songs, including light jazz and even some soft rock. However, it was distinguished by slower tempo, and the large prominence of strings. When reed instruments such as saxophones were employed, they were used in a gentle, as opposed to brash, tone.
The style has been synonymous with the tag "with strings". The use of stringed instruments had been used in sweet bands in the 1930s and in background contexts in films. In the 1940s and 1950s strings had been used in jazz and popular music contexts. As examples in the jazz genre, there are the post-World War II recordings of Charlie Parker and the 1955 recordings of Clifford Brown and Helen Merrill. Early examples of practitioner in the popular context were Dinah Washington in 1951, and Jackie Gleason in 1952. In the 1950s the use of strings quickly became a main feature of the developing easy listening genre.
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