Lounge
Lounge is a term in popular music created for a designation of light, background music that often sounds in hotels, shops, cafes or lifts.
Birth: 1956 Bloom: 2002
In spite of the fact that there is specially recorded music for relaxation, the term lounge covers a wide range of artists in different genres from jazz, bossa nova to electronics. The main characteristic feature of the style is lightness and calmness. Everyone can be a lounge musician if he or she plays for public in restaurants or shops. What`s more, parties with martini are usually associated with lounge. Lounge is said to be the music of bachelor hotels that saturated with experimental kitsch artists.
From the retrospective point of view, the lounge gold era tool place during the 1950-60s with well-known pop songs performed by unknown orchestras. In the 1960s the first big and professional ensembles emerged, they included the Bert Kaempfert Orchestra, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, the James Last Orchestra, the Paul Mauriat Orchestra, Horst Jankowski Orchestra, and now their records are attributed to lounge. Records by singers such as Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and later Engelbert Humperdinck are also referred to lounge. Film scores, background music as well, are also important part of lounge (Henry Mancini, Burt Bacharach).
In the 1990s lounge became popular again with revived interest to retro records, due to this there were released a number of compilations with original lounge music of the 50-60s. At the same time new ensembles cultivated the traditional lounge style (Combustible Edison, Hooverphonic, De Phazz), as well as there were musicians who shared lounge attributes with electronic music (Jaffa`s compilations Café del Mar, Zimmer-G).
Also read: Chillout, Easy Listening
Umbrellate style: Downtempo
Got something to add? Please!