REVEALED: The Ultimate Chill-Out Artists on Spotify

Most of us find ourselves listening to music to help us chill-out – whether that’s on a long drive, while soaking in a bubble bath, or even when prepping dinner.

And whilst we’re all looking for the same outcome – to get that ‘Zen’ feeling – the songs and artists we each use to help us along to that headspace can differ greatly. Like most things, ultimately it all comes down to personal preference.

However, there are a surprising number of artists and songs that a lot of us collectively agree on as having chilled-out and relaxing qualities, including Ed Sheeran and Drake.

So whether you prefer to chill-out to music while wrapped up warm next to a fire, or while exploring and adventuring outdoors, we’ve delved into the data to reveal the ultimate relaxing songs and artists to listen to on Spotify.

Methodology

We scraped Spotify and pulled off the data for the top 50 chill-out playlists in both the UK and the US, containing more than 16,000 songs!

We then examined this data to find which artists appear most frequently across both the UK and US in ‘chill-out’ playlists on Spotify.

We also broke down and looked at the components of the most chilled songs on Spotify, to reveal the ideal song length, tempo, volume, and even the level of dancibility, energy and liveliness. We even found the most common release year for songs that feature in the ‘chill-out’ playlists, to reveal the ultimate chill year for music.

When were the most chill-out songs released?

We’ve delved into the Spotify data, from both the UK and the USA, to find out what year the most chilled songs across the US and the UK were released…

In the US, 2019 was the year that the most chilled songs were released, including the likes of Falling (Harry Styles), Before You Go (Lewis Capaldi) and Takeaway (The Chainsmokers) being released.

In the UK, 2014 was the year that the most chilled songs were released, including Don’t (Ed Sheeran), Collide (Justine Skye) and Like I Can (Sam Smith).

What makes the ultimate chill-out song?

As there’s such a wide range of artists and music out there, it begs the question, ‘what makes the ideal chill-out song’? 

To find out, we’ve looked at the average song length, tempo, volume and even the level of danceability, energy and liveliness, to reveal the most common ‘ingredients’ in chilled music.

Ideal length

According to the data, the ideal chill-out song is around 244 seconds (4 mins 4 secs) long.

A couple of popular chill-out songs that fit this criteria include Champagne Problems (Taylor Swift) and Help Me Lose My Mind (Disclosure).

Ideal tempo

The speed and tempo of a song can make or break its chill-ability, and we’ve found that people want songs with a tempo of around 114bpm to relax to.

This means that Matilda (Harry Styles) and Wicked Games (The Weeknd) are ideal choices.

Ideal volume

Of course, you can amend your device’s volume to suit your surroundings, but even if you kept it at the same volume, some songs are generally louder than others because of the way they’ve been recorded and produced.

According to the data, the ideal chill-out tune will sit at between -7.1 and -11.2 decibels in terms of loudness.

Other notable factors of the ideal chill-out song

Spotify also allows you to check out the danceability of a song. Spotify’s ‘danceability’ ranking literally looks into how suitable a track is for dancing, taking into account the song's tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and regularity.

Our research shows that the ideal danceability of a chilled song is 0.615, with Spotify ranking the songs with the highest levels of danceability a score of 1, and the songs with the lowest levels of danceability a score of 0. Looking into the danceability of songs, Ice Ice Baby (Vanilla Ice) and Cha Cha Slide (DJ Casper) are two of the most ‘danceable’ songs on Spotify, with Ice Ice Baby having a score of 0.979 and Cha Cha Slide having a score of 0.987.

The energy levels of a song can also be seen through Spotify, which is the perceptual measure of a song’s “intensity and activity”, according to the audio streaming service. We found that the ideal energy level for a chilled song is 0.53, with Spotify ranking the songs with the highest energy level with a ranking of 1, and the songs with the lowest energy levels to a ranking of 0.

For comparison, the chart topping recent release from David Guetta, I'm Good (Blue), has very high energy levels, with Spotify awarding it a score of 0.965.

Conclusion

There are plenty of songs out there for you to chill out to, especially when sitting and relaxing with a joint or even with a glass of your favourite THC seltzer in hand.

If you would like to use or refer to this research at all, please credit Cycling Frog with a link to this webpage or our homepage.