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“60s lounge” and Laufey
I was really taken by the sound of Laufey’s Madwoman and am looking for the older music which inspired her.
The internet, however, has not been helpful. Between citing “The Great American Soundbook”¹ as her inspiration, or declaring its “clearly” bossa nova², i’m really lost. One person said “60s lounge,” which seemed promising³ but searching that brings a ton of AI-generated slop-and-slop-byproducts.
Is there a better term for what she’s referencing? Specific artists? Specific regions even?
- which doesn’t sound the same to me at all
- which no the fuck it is not, i, a brazilian, say
- another person said “70s lounge”
I asked a similar question to this years ago here’s the very helpful response.
I can name specific artists that she was inspired by: Chet Baker, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, and Norah Jones. Seth McFarlane also has albums with songs like this especially his duet albums with Liz Gillies. Laufey is also frequently nominated in the Traditional Pop category at the Grammys which can get you even more artists.
It is essentially jazz. Pop jazz. And it is very American.
Brilliant! Thank you for this!
IMO it's 100% Bossa Nova inspired. The most famous track of the genre is probably The Girl from Ipanema, and I think you can probably hear the similarities between it and Madwoman. And it's also not the first song of Laufey's that was very clearly Bossa Nova inspired either. E.g. Falling Behind, From the Start, Lover Girl and a bunch more are also undeniably so as well.
p.s. If you want to hear more (non-AI) Bossa Nova, the best ways to go about finding it is to check out RYM's top album page for the genre. See: https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/all-time/g:bossa%2dnova/
Let’s agree to disagree. I grew up on our homegrown bossa nova, which doesn’t have the qualia this has at all. This feels very USian, very rooted in something more like Swing or Big Band even (especially with its complicated symphonic elements) with very little to do with the bossa nova of Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes.
There are loads of different styles of Bossa Nova. You may be intimately familiar with the "authentic" homegrown Brazilian Portuguese Bossa Nova which tends to be somewhat paired down in terms of instrumentation and arrangements. However others, like Italian-American/Crooner and "Big Band" Bossa Nova, often did feature more orchestration like in Laufey's song. E.g. Engelbert Humperdinck - Quando Quando Quando, Frank Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim - Change Partners, Quincy Jones - Serenata and Soul Bossa Nova (both from his appropriately titled Big Band Bossa Nova album).
p.s. RYM actually allows you to filter the album chart BTW. E.g. This filter shows all the not-Portuguese language, American based, Bossa Nova albums: https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/all-time/g:bossa%2dnova/l:%2dpt/loc:united%2dstates/
Laufey is Icelandic with partly Chinese roots IIRC, so her influences are probably more of a generic global sensibility than just USian. Japanese Bossa Nova might be more in line with the vibe she has than the more traditional Brazilian stuff. But primarily she feels “jazzy.” She actually makes me think of the soundtrack to a 90s Norah Ephron movie more than anything, so that’s probably the best place to look for similar sounds.
Ooh, that’s a good point. I’ll look to Japan and this soundtrack. Thanks!
I think one of the canonical examples is Lisa Ono’s cover of Country Roads. The Japanese flavor of the genre tends to be more poppy and also mash up a lot of American folk music styles.
I agree with you that it's not really OG bossa nova, but cfabbro makes a good point! There's definitely bossa nova inspiration (especially if you include second-and-third-gen big band bossa jazz) in the lineage of this Laufey tune. Thanks for posting this by the way! Fun to see modern artist lean into this aesthetic.
I've been 'curating' (read: sloppily adding whole albums to and then sometimes deleting single songs from) a playlist that would make good background music for a fictional tiki bar in the desert that you might be interested in:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1pAIKcEt3uHdmHci6WvA1x
Note that it's all instrumental, and definitely has some genre variation that you're NOT asking about (i.e. surf-rock, dub reggae, psychedelica, etc) but I would say the core of it is music that would fit in really nicely with your request (Dave Pike, Martin Denny, Walter Wanderley, Al Caiola, Cal Tjader, Pierre Cavali, etc) and lots of more modern artists that are doing stuff in similar styles (Tikiyaki Orchestra, Kava Kon, The Sorcerers, Kolombo, etc.)
I'll definitely be combing this thread for more artists to add there!
Nice playlist! I love curating themed lists like this. I added it to my library and I'll undoubtedly be giving it many listens. I'm poking around your other playlists too and especially love how you've got an "Acceptable Christmas" one — that's a contentious category that let me to make my own "Listenable Christmas" list a few years ago. Of course my spouse flatly disagrees with most of my calls so that one was DOA in my household, haha.
Thanks, I hope you enjoy! Makes great background music for parties in my opinion, and and I have found it surprisingly great for brightening up a gloomy winter drive...
And yeah Acceptable Christmas has a long way to go but my partner is super into Christmas and Christmas music while I am very much not, so that's my cautious attempt at finding some middle ground there lol
You should intersperse some Calypso music in there. Get some phases to liven things up so people will get on the dance floor.
Hit me with a recommendation, I'm open to it!
It reminds me of some of the music from 60's Bond movies. So, it might be worthwhile to look into some of those soundtracks. Maybe You Only Live Twice would be a place to start. However, I also think there's a lot of bossa nova influence. It's probably more accurate to say that it was inspired by a variety of styles.
Maybe it depends on your background. If you've grown up hearing a lot of american instrumental music, you might notice the bossa nova aspect as more distinctive, and vice versa.
Yeah, definitely Bossa Nova.
Augh, thank you for reminding me of "From the Start"; now I've been whistling it for hours XD
Others have dropped some good terms but here are a few more that have been overlooked: space-age pop, bachelor-pad music, and cocktail music might steer things in the right direction. Here's a niche fan site with a bunch of detail about those.
There's definitely a strong bossa nova vibe in that Laufey song but I'm also hearing some overlap with exotica, a weird (and frequently racist) subgenre originating in the '50s, marked by orchestration that included things like bongos, vibraphone, theremin, and Hammond organ, a mishmash of sci-fi futurism and appropriated Latin, Arabic, and Polynesian motifs. More examples.
Also some have been saying that it's a distinctly American sound but I think it shares a throughline with Italian Jazz from the '60s and '70s. Consider composers like Stelvio Cipriani and Piero Piccioni. We're circling the Eurospy film soundtrack subgenre, which is pretty great(!!) and of course borrows heavily from the O.G. Eurospy — James Bond — which is where I link to Shirley Bassey, Nancy Sinatra, and Matt Monro. If this music is your cup of tea, I'm pleasantly surprised to see that SomaFM is still online and broadcasting the same great themed radio stations that I enjoyed 20 years ago, including (but definitely not limited to) Secret Agent.
If you're interested in more recent styles influenced by this sound, you might enjoy some trip hop / downtempo from musicians like Hooverphonic, Bitter:Sweet, Portishead, Moodorama, and Airlock.
Oh, I was looking into other, newer artists that are drawing from this sound and just discovered Lana Del Rey released a new official Bond theme for the upcoming video game 007 First Light, literally as I was putting this comment together. It's a good song, not really a fit for this theme but I thought the timing of the announcement was relevant.
Thanks for writing this up! I'm stoked to get into all these links :)
I can't listen to it now, but 60s lounge makes me think of "easy listening" and perhaps "new wave" as genres
Edit: you might have trouble with generated AI shittiness when trying to search for either, unfortunately
"New wave" is going to lead to a lot of '80s synthpop.
I mean, there are worse destinations, but that's not exactly what OP is going for.
...methinks that was a mis-typed "new age"...
Yeah, I think my initial suggestion of "Easy Listening" has merit - got home and listened to the song, then had a look at the wiki for "easy listening" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easy_listening), and Julie London has very similar vibes to this.
You might also get good results searching for Smooth Jazz compilations from and before the 90s.
I have not heard of Laufey (but I may have to give her a listen after reading this).
In the mid to late-'90s, just as the Swing revival was starting to wind down, my wife and I bought a compilation album called "Sex Kittens in Hi-Fi" (whatever you do, don't search for that title at work without including the word 'album' or 'cd') that was definitely '60s lounge. We had a couple albums from that series, but this one was our favorite.
While searching for a page to link to, I kept seeing the genre "exotica" referenced; that may be a path to start down (including the site linked above), if you're interested in finding more.
One band we listened to in the same time frame was Supreme Beings of Leisure. Their self-titled album (released in 2000) definitely has similar "lounge-y" vibes, but with more electronic influences. You may also enjoy that (and their later releases; their most recent album, 22, was released in 2023 and I enjoyed it) as well.
Can't believe nobody has listed the ultimate source of lounge music, the ULTRA LOUNGE collection, which is something like 25 CDs of lounge sorted by various subgenres and themes. It used to be hard to get, but these days most or possibly all of them are on Spotify.
A lot of lounge is kind of silly, fun music, less serious than what you posted, but you should still be able to find interesting interprets and pursue their other releases outside of Ultra Lounge.
I love lounge music, but I'm focused more on the sillier, livelier and jazzier kinds, so I can't give you any interprets off the top of my head apart from maybe Julie London who was already mentioned.
But do try some of the other Lounge styles, maybe you'll like them too.
A Lot Of Livin To Do by Nancy Wilson has great energy.
Gopher Mambo by Yma Sumac is one of my favorite songs because it's just so fun.
Oh, and also try Samara Joy who's more of a classic jazz singer, but she's so incredible she will for sure be viewed as one of the greats along some of the very best jazz/lounge singers, and she's just 26 years old.
Finally, I think this is a good place to plug the band I play in, Perfect Time. Unfortunately a lot of lounge music needs a big band, but we try to make functional arrangements where possible and we do have two great loungy songs recorded on video - Le Paradis Pour Toi from 1960 and Aruanda from 1963. More music to arrive on the channel soonish, though not exactly this style.