ABSTRACT
There has been a popular perception, a temptation, to regard easy listening as a dilution of somehow more authentic music, a singular product of the 1950s with little precedent or offspring of its own, a specifically atomic age companion to white bread and TV dinners. There are many problems with this line of thought. To think that easy listening represents some kind of stylistic or even commercial unity is a fallacy. To think that easy listening is, or ever was, unique in its appropriation of genre to serve a gebrauchsmusik purpose of relaxation is likewise untrue.
