Best relaxing music

We all know that sometimes we need to slow down and give our bodies a chance to catch up – music can be one of the simplest ways to achieve this. It’s easy to understand why listening to our favourite music can have a profound impact on our mood, but can certain music have measurable physiological and psychological results?

'Weightless’, an eight-minute track arranged by ambient artists Marconi Union in collaboration with therapeutic sound therapist Lyz Cooper, was scientifically developed to reduce stress and anxiety. The track uses a few simple, but clever compositional tricks to help slow down your heart rate, reduce your blood pressure and encourage your brain to start producing alpha brainwaves (the ones that help you relax).

The tempo is at a calming 60 BPM, it uses low and sustained tones, it’s long enough for your body to synchronise with the rhythm and it doesn’t have a repeating melody so your brain can’t predict what it’s about to hear. All of these factors combine to produce a song that has been dubbed “the most relaxing track in the world”. There’s even a scientific study to back it up.

In this playlist, you’ll find the full eight-minute ‘Weightless’ track, plus 15 other songs from a variety of musical genres, that we consider to be the best relaxing music. This playlist is perfect to listen to at the end of a long, stressful day – even if we don’t have our own fancy scientific study to prove it.