Genre Research Project 64/1360: Lounge

Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The range of lounge music encompasses beautiful music-influenced instrumentals, modern electronica (with chillout, and downtempo influences), while remaining thematically focused on its retro-space-age cultural elements. The earliest type lounge music appeared during the 1920s and 1930s, and was known as light music. Contemporaneously, the term lounge music may also be used to describe the types of music played in hotels (the lounge, the bar), casinos, and piano bars.