Chill-out (shortened as chill; also typeset as chillout or chill out) is a loosely defined form of popular music characterized by slow tempos and relaxed moods.
The term "chill-out music" – originally conflated with "ambient house" – came from an area called "The White Room" at the Heaven nightclub in London in 1989. There, DJs played ambient mixes from sources such as Brian Eno and Pink Floyd to allow dancers a place to "chill out" from the faster-paced music of the main dance floor. Ambient house became widely popular over the next decade before it declined due to market saturation.
In the early 2000s, DJs in Ibiza's Café Del Mar began creating ambient house mixes that drew on jazz, classical, Hispanic, and New-age music sources. The popularity of chill-out subsequently expanded to dedicated satellite radio channels, outdoor festivals, and thousands of compilation albums. "Chill-out" was also removed from its ambient origins and became its own distinct genre.
Origins and definition
There is no exact definition of chill-out music.
The term, which has evolved throughout the decades, generally refers to anything that might be identified as a modern type of
easy listening. Some of the genres associated with "chill" include
downtempo,
classical music,
dance music,
jazz,
hip-hop music,
world music,
pop music,
lounge music, and
ambient music.
Chill-out typically has slow rhythms, sampling, a "
trance-like nature", "drop-out beats", and a mixture of electronic instruments with acoustic instruments. In the "Ambient/Chill Out" chapter of Rick Snoman's 2013 book
Dance Music Manual, he writes, "it could be said that as long as the tempo remains below 120 BPM and it employs a laid-back groove, it could be classed as chill out."
The term originated from an area called "The White Room" at the Heaven nightclub in London in 1989.
Ambient house declined after the mid-1990s due to market saturation. In the early 2000s, DJs in Ibiza's Café Del Mar began creating ambient house mixes that drew on jazz, classical, Hispanic, and New-age music sources. They called their product "chill-out music", and it sparked a revived interest in ambient house from the public and record labels. The popularity of chill-out subsequently expanded to dedicated satellite radio channels, outdoor festivals, and the release of thousands of compilation albums offering ambient sounds and "muffled" beats.
Streaming
Streaming media became the dominant source of music industry revenue in 2016.
During that decade,
Spotify engendered a trend that became known among the industry as "lean back listening", which refers to a listener who "thinks less about the artist or album they are seeking out, and instead connects with emotions, moods, and activities". As of 2017, the front page of the service's "browse" screen included many algorithmically-selected playlists with names such as "Chilled Folk", "Chill Hits", "Evening Chill", "Chilled R&B", "Indie Chillout", and "Chill Tracks".
In 2014, the service reported that throughout the year "Chill Out" playlists had trended much higher than the national average on campuses across
Colorado, where marijuana had been legalized in January of that year.
In an editorial piece for
The Baffler titled "The Problem with Muzak", writer Liz Pelly criticized the "chill" playlists as "the purest distillation of Spotify's ambition to turn all music into emotional wallpaper".
Associated terms
Chillwave
In 2009, a genre called "
chillwave" was invented by the satirical blog Hipster Runoff for music that could already be described with existing labels such as
dream pop.
The pseudonymous author, known as "Carles", later explained that he was only "throwing a bunch of pretty silly names on a blog post and saw which one stuck."
Chillwave became one of the first genres to acquire an identity online,
although the term did not gain mainstream currency until early 2010, when it was the subject of serious, analytical articles by
The Wall Street Journal and
The New York Times.
In 2011, Carles said it was "ridiculous that any sort of press took it seriously" and that although the bands he spoke to "get annoyed" by the tag, "they understand that it's been a good thing. What about iTunes making it an official genre? It's now theoretically a marketable indie sound."
Lofi hip hop
In 2013,
YouTube began allowing its users to host
, which resulted in a host of 24-hour "radio stations" dedicated to microgenres such as
vaporwave,
a derivation of chillwave.
Music streaming platform Spotify added to the popular "lo-fi beats" wave by generating "Spotified genres", including "Chill Hits", "Bedroom Pop" playlists, and promoting numerous "chill pop" artists.
In 2017, a form of downtempo music tagged as "
chillhop" or "lo-fi hip hop" became popular among YouTube music streamers. By 2018, several of these channels had attracted millions of followers
and Spotify's "Chill Hits" playlist had 5.4 million listeners.
See also
