BBC Doc: Easy Listening

Easy-listening music is difficult to quantify today. As I wrote in a Wall Street Journal essay not long ago (go here), the genre began as mood music in 1945, when an attempt was made by record companies to ease the stress of post-World War II America with instrumental music designed to change moods. In the 1950s, mood music flourished as the LP format went to 12 inches, followed by hi-fidelity and stereo by decade's end. Mood music became easy listening in the early 1960s, then “beautiful music" with the rise of FM, followed by adult contemporary in the '70s, which helped categorize virtually anything that wasn't hard rock, soul or teenage pop.

As arranger-leaders like Percy Faith and Bert Kaempfert faded away in the 1970s, the so-called easy-listening genre didn't die off. It merely changed its stripes. Surely the Love Unlimited Orchestra and the Carpenters in the '70s were easy listening. So was Lionel Richie and Linda Ronstadt. Today, hipsters call this music lounge or chill. And there's nothing wrong with the music, no matter the decade, since its primary function is the same as it was in Paul Weston's day—to let you relax and clear you mind.

Here's a BBC documentary on the genre. While it's not perfect (we never learn why the music became popular over the years, and after a while the documentary seems to give up on trying to parse what's easy listening and what's just a softly sung ballad). But the documentary is well written and wonderfully funny in places, and it does provide an interesting and analytic look at what happened to the genre after 1970 (and I haven't seen Richard Carpenter interviewed on camera in decades)...