Easy Listen

Ok, the party is more or less over, today is the day we start 2021 hoping, of course, this year brings more joy than the last. It’s day one and we have already celebrated a lot over the last few days so today we need a day to ease into the new year. Here at Easy Listen it is a little reminder of easy tunes to listen to, nothing to hurt that sore head but to gently guide you through day one of the years.

In the early 1990s a new yet old, musical tribe, reared up. People re-found a sort of long lost (and not highly regarded at the time) musical genre called Easy Listening.

At the time of its first-round between the 1950s and the 1970’s it was not seen as a credible musical form yet it was massively popular from chart hits to film screen it was everywhere. Soft, easy, and unobtrusive, it was seen as the perfect background sound. Yet 40 odd years later music makers re-mined it and found it to be a very credible source of songwriting, with fantastic arrangements and tempos full to the brim with musical skill.

Easy listening music featured popular vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, Astrud Gilberto, and many others and goes across genres including Pop via Jazz to Bosanova.

Suddenly everyone was unearthly some rare or classic tunes to play on the radio at home or driving in the car. Easy listening was not just back in fashion but was more fashionable than it had ever been before

So how to describe it? well, initially it was seen very much as middle-of-the-road music that encompassed instrumental and vocal tracks of standards, hit songs, and covers of selected popular songs. It mostly concentrated on music that pre-dated the rock n’ roll era, so characteristically on music from the 1940s and 1950s, softly reimagined.

So what could you want more on a day to take it very easily than some of these tunes to while away your day? Here is our suggestion for you.

Dionne Warwick – Do You Know the Way to San Jose