[1] The range of lounge music encompasses beautiful music–influenced instrumentals, modern electronica (with chillout, and downtempo influences), while remaining thematically focused on its retro–space age cultural elements.
[citation needed] In any event, these lounge singers, perhaps performing in a hotel or cocktail bar, are usually accompanied by one or two other musicians, and they favor cover songs composed by others, especially pop standards, many deriving from the days of Tin Pan Alley.
[4][5] In the early 1990s the lounge revival was in full swing and included such groups as Combustible Edison, Love Jones, The Coctails, Pink Martini, the High Llamas, Don Tiki, and Nightcaps.
The multinational group the Gentle People, signed to the UK label Rephlex Records, attracted an international following and appeared on various lounge and exotica compilations.
[7][8] These groups wore suits and played music inspired by earlier works of Antônio Carlos Jobim, Juan García Esquivel, Louis Prima and many others.
[citation needed] In 2004, the Parisian band Nouvelle Vague released a self-titled album in which they covered songs from the '80s post-punk and new wave genres in the style of Bossa Nova.
Other artists have taken lounge music to new heights by recombining rock with pop, such as Jon Brion, The Bird and the Bee, Triangle Sun, Pink Martini, the Buddha-Lounge series, and the surrounding regulars of Café Largo.
[9] When the band takes a break to speak with Jake and his brother Elwood, Murph switches on a Muzak version of "Just the Way You Are," performed by Billy Joel, a former lounge musician himself.
[citation needed] Later on SNL, Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer portrayed a goofy married duo of lounge-style musicians, but in unlikely venues such as high school dances.
[13] British comedians Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones appeared as a cheesy keyboard and bass duo during the end credits of one series of their long-running sketch show.