Easy listening

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Easy listening music is a style of popular music which emerged in the mid-20th century. Around 1980, it was the most listened to radio format in America, although it soon became scarce as a format not because its listeners were too few but because they were getting too old and therefore less desirable for radio advertisers. This type of music features simple, catchy melodies, cool, laid-back harmonies and occasionally rhythms suitable for dancing. While it is mostly instrumental music, some singers, such as Andy Williams, Jack Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Eydie Gorme had vocal styles which were highly compatible with this style. Much of the work of some other pop vocalists, including Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, and Mel Torme was too frenetic or swing-oriented to be played in an easy listening format. Beautiful music is a subset of easy listening music, since as a radio format it had rigid standards for instrumentation (e.g., few or no saxophones) and restrictions on how many vocal pieces could be played in an hour. Its sometimes called Nostalgia music.

The term has sometimes been applied negatively in the years since this format went out of fashion. It is similar to what is called "lounge" or "lounge core", but lounge music is much more jazz-oriented and dependent on improvisation than easy listening. Easy listening music is almost always orchestrated and is more analogous to classical music than to jazz. Since easy-listening music is rather unknown to the younger generations, the term easy listening is often incorrectly applied to soft pop, Smooth Jazz or new age music. Easy listening music is also sometimes known as "mood music" or "MOR", or more pejoratively as "Muzak" or "elevator music".

Adult contemporary music is a much more hip form of Easy Listening and is one of the top radio formats in the USA today.

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