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Like "swing," Lounge Music (sometimes known as Space Age Bachelor Pad Music) is a catchall term that actually includes several different types of popular music released from the early 50s to the early 70s. They have differences (and some might even argue about the wisdom of grouping them all under one umbrella), but they do have more in common with each other than they do with Rock or R&B or the other, more folk music based styles that came of age at the same time. They were, by and large, music for the modern upscale bachelor hipster, created to take full advantage of the era's new advancements in hi-fi. As a part of the suburban household, The Den is a particularly postwar, American invention. This music was made just for it. Everything Austin Powers wants to be, lounge already is.

Space Age Pop refers to music which used primitive electronica to create snappy instrumentals; it's best represented by artists like Perry and Kingsley (whose "Swan's Splashdown" served as the inspiration for Smash Mouth's "Walking On The Sun"). Exotica took modern pop arrangements and bathed them in kitschy "island" or "foreign" motifs (think Yma Sumac). Mood Music was an intensely romantic, wonderfully bombastic instrumental pop overdosing on brass and strings (the above Jackie Gleason album being an excellent example, as well as his theme for the Honeymooners TV show). Finally, Obscuro was created to categorize lounge music that was too bizarre for any of the above categories (See: T.O.N.T.O's Expanding Headband). Taken together, these styles create a portrait of not only an era but its sexiest, most cerebral, most tasteful inhabitants - a legion of short-back-and-sides men who seduced curvaceous women in elegant surroundings and brought them along on an futuristic, multicultural aural adventure. In Stereophonic Sound, even.

Here's a collection of links to the best websites about lounge music and its many faces. If you have or know of a site like this that isn't listed here, e-mail me!

History