Easy listening is a style of popular music and radio format that emerged in the 1960s, evolving out of big band music, and related to MOR (middle-of-the-road) music as played on many AM radio stations.

Easy Listening first appeared on WPIX-FM, New York, in 1964. The format, a blend of popular vocals and instrumental music, including big bands and smaller groups, was the creation of Charlie Whitaker, program director of the station owned by the New York Daily News.

The name "Easy Listening" was coined in 1965 by Claude Hall, radio-tv editor of Billboard Magazine to describe the sound of WPIX-FM. The station quickly became the top-rated FM radio station in New York and ranked among the top five of all stations, AM and FM, from 1964 through 1968. Easy listening music featured popular vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Dionne Warwick, Astrud Gilberto, Matt Monro and many others, vocal groups such as the Fifth Dimension, the Johnny Mann Singers, the New Christy Minstrels, Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66, the Ray Charles Singers,and instrumentals by Henry Mancini, Raymond LeFevre, Paul Mauriat, George Shearing, Andre Previn, Charlie Byrd and many others.