Lounge music

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Lounge music
Stylistic origins
Cultural origins1950s, United States
Derivative forms

Lounge music is a type of

space age cultural elements. The earliest type of lounge music appeared during the 1920s and 1930s, and was known as light music
.

Retrospective usage

long playing album covers, but has been retroactively applied.[citation needed
]

While

space age sound effects of the time and reflected the public interest in space exploration. With the advent of stereophonic technology, artists such as Esquivel
used spatial audio techniques to full effect, creating whooshing sounds with his orchestra.

AllMusic describes lounge as less "adventurous" than exotica or space age pop, but not as "watered-down" as Muzak. "Instead, it occupied the middle ground, appealing to fans of traditional pop as well as space age pop."[3]

A good deal of lounge music was pure instrumental (i.e., no main vocal part, although there could be minor vocal parts). Sometimes, this music would be theme music from movies or TV shows, although such music could be produced independently from other entertainment productions. These instrumentals could be produced with an orchestral arrangement, or from an arrangement of instruments very similar to that found in jazz, or even rock and roll such as the Hammond organ or electric guitar.[citation needed]

Lounge singers

"Swinging" music of the era is also considered "lounge" and consisted of a

Mary Kaye Trio
were first on the scene in the early 1950s.

Lounge singers have a lengthy history stretching back to the decades of the early twentieth century.[

pop standards, many deriving from the days of Tin Pan Alley.[citation needed
]

Many well-known performers got their start as lounge singers and musicians.[quantify] Billy Joel worked in a piano bar for six months and penned the song "Piano Man" about his experience.[4]

Resurgence

Lounge emerged in the late 1980s as a label of endearment by younger fans whose parents had listened to such music in the 1960s. It has enjoyed resurgences in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s, led initially by figures such as Buster Poindexter and Jaymz Bee. In Japan, producer Yasuharu Konishi became popular for his work with Pizzicato Five, and is often considered "the Godfather of Shibuya-kei," a genre mostly derived from 1960s lounge music.[5][6]

In the early 1990s the lounge revival was in full swing and included such groups as

Nightcaps. The multinational group the Gentle People, signed to the UK label Rephlex Records, attracted an international following and appeared on various lounge and exotica compilations.[7] Alternative band Stereolab demonstrated the influence of lounge with releases like their 1993 EP Space Age Bachelor Pad Music and their 1997 album Dots and Loops, and in 1996 Capitol Records began issuing the Ultra-Lounge series of lounge music albums. The lounge style was starkly in contrast to the grunge music that dominated the period.[8][9] These groups wore suits and played music inspired by earlier works of Antônio Carlos Jobim, Juan García Esquivel, Louis Prima and many others.[citation needed
]

In 2004, the Parisian band Nouvelle Vague released a self-titled album in which they covered songs from the '80s post-punk and new wave genres in the style of Bossa Nova. Other artists have taken lounge music to new heights by recombining rock with pop, such as Jon Brion, The Bird and the Bee, Triangle Sun, Pink Martini, the Buddha-Lounge series, and the surrounding regulars of Café Largo. The movie The Rise and Fall of Black Velvet Flag (2003) is a documentary about three older punk rockers who created a lounge-punk band.[citation needed]

In 2018, British rock band Arctic Monkeys released their sixth studio album, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. The album, which was a shift in style for the band after 2013's AM, the album has a more lounge pop sound rather than their previous, alternative rock sound. The album is a concept album about a hotel on the Moon (Tranquility Base is the site of the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing) and also reflects on modern society and technology, and it's effect on the human mind, with frontman Alex Turner taking inspiration from both old school Science Fiction films, and Neil Postman's 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves To Death. Their seventh studio album, The Car also has a laid-back lounge pop sound, continuing their shift in sound to a lounge pop, and baroque pop style.[citation needed]


In film

In the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, five members of the defunct Blues Brothers have formed a lounge act, "Murph and the Magictones," and are found performing latin-esque music at a Holiday Inn.[10] When the band takes a break to speak with Jake and his brother Elwood, Murph switches on a Muzak version of "Just the Way You Are," performed by Billy Joel, a former lounge musician himself.[citation needed] Later, when Jake and Elwood are in an elevator, Jobim's "The Girl from Ipanema" is heard on Muzak.[11]

The 1989 film The Fabulous Baker Boys starred Jeff Bridges, Beau Bridges, and Michelle Pfeiffer as a successful lounge act.[12]

Comedy

Andy Kaufman created a character called Tony Clifton. A parody of show biz entitlement and excess, Clifton is untalented, lazy (often not bothering to remember the words to the songs), and abusive to his audiences.[citation needed]

high school dances. Part of the humor derived from the incongruous application of their "nerdy" and outdated style to performances of current pop-music hits. British comedians Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones appeared as a cheesy keyboard and bass duo during the end credits of one series of their long-running sketch show.[citation needed
]

Richard Cheese and the Lounge Kittens perform lounge-style arrangements of recent popular songs for comedic effect.[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. S2CID 191619811
    . Retrieved 9 February 2019 – via Project MUSE.
  2. ^ Exotica! The Best of Martin Denny (CD). Martin Denny. Rhino Records. R2 70774.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  3. ^ "Easy Listening » Exotica/Lounge » Lounge". AllMusic.
  4. ^ Billy Joel, Charlie Rose (December 23, 2013). How Billy Joel became the "Piano Man" (Television production). CBS This Morning. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12.
  5. ^ Ankeny, Jason. "Pizzicato Five artist biography". AllMusic. Retrieved 1 August 2013.
  6. ^ "Shibuya-Kei Music Genre Overview". AllMusic. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  7. ^ Cooper, Sean. "The Gentle People - Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved 8 September 2022.
  8. ^ Spindler, Amy M. (March 7, 1995). "Review/Fashion; Chic Prevails Over Grunge". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2012-11-10. Retrieved 2007-12-12.
  9. ^ Lacayo, Richard (May 25, 1998). "Ring-A-Ding Ding". Time. Archived from the original on February 3, 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-17.
  10. ISBN 9781466873018
    . Retrieved August 6, 2021.
  11. The Free Lance-Star. Archived
    from the original on 2021-08-07. Retrieved 2021-08-06.
  12. ^ Ebert, Roger (October 13, 1989). "The Fabulous Baker Boys movie review (1989)". RogerEbert.com.
  13. ^ Sean Elder. "Bill Murray". Salon.com. Archived from the original on 2008-01-12. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
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