Music That Helps You Sleep: Minimalist Composer Max Richter, Pop Phenom Ed Sheeran & Your Favorites

I admit it now, I was once an avid lis­ten­er of the sooth­ing new age music of Enya. At the time, in my musi­cal cir­cles, this was not cool, and at the time I cared about such things. So Enya was my guilty secret. I didn’t need to work that hard to hide my affec­tion. I only lis­tened to Enya at night, as I lay in bed alone and drift­ed off. I used my Enya cas­sette tapes (yes tapes), you see, to put myself to sleep.

I’ve had oth­er sleep favorites. Beethoven, Mozart, Bach… inter­pre­ta­tions of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach by syn­the­siz­er wiz­ard Wendy Car­los…. It may seem dis­parag­ing to say that a cer­tain composer’s music lulls one to sleep, but I think it’s just the oppo­site. So does com­pos­er and musi­cian Max Richter, who has cre­at­ed an eight-hour piece called “Sleep” that is “meant to be slept through,” says Richter. (There’s also a one hour ver­sion that’s more read­i­ly avail­able for pur­chase.) Its gen­tle waves of strings, voice, piano, and synths are like a musi­cal Lethe one floats on into obliv­ion.

Richter has per­formed the piece with oth­er musi­cians, just recent­ly overnight on a Sep­tem­ber 27th BBC Radio 3 broad­cast, “the longest live broad­cast,” writes The New York­er, “of a sin­gle piece of music in the station’s his­to­ry.” The small audi­ence in atten­dance most­ly stayed awake. One mem­ber report­ed­ly hal­lu­ci­nat­ed. The com­po­si­tion con­sists of thir­ty-one themed move­ments (Hear “Dream 3 (in the midst of my life)” above). Lovers of mod­ern min­i­mal­ist com­posers like Philip Glass and William Basin­s­ki will notice sim­i­lar uses of drone notes and rep­e­ti­tion in “Sleep.” You may even hear a touch of Enya….

Richter’s is the per­fect music to accom­pa­ny me into dream­land; even those move­ments that include a vocal­ist use the voice as a word­less, ethe­re­al instru­ment, as so many ambi­ent musi­cians do. I’ve come across more than a few favorite ambi­ent and min­i­mal­ist com­posers late at night, when Spo­ti­fy begins rec­om­mend­ing sleep playlists. “Sleep,” it turns out, “is one of Spotify’s most pop­u­lar cat­e­gories,” accord­ing to Bill­board. How­ev­er, the “world’s favorite choice when choos­ing music to unwind” may sur­prise you: red-head­ed Eng­lish singer/songwriter Ed Sheer­an.

I’m not per­son­al­ly a fan of his music, but even if I were, I can’t imag­ine lis­ten­ing to it as I set­tle down to sleep. Nonethe­less, mil­lions of peo­ple stream Sheer­an’s songs on repeat at bed­time, along with oth­er pop artists like Ellie Gould­ing, John Leg­end, Sam Smith, and Rihan­na. To each their own, I guess. Hear a playlist of the most-streamed “sleep” music on Spo­ti­fy above. (If you don’t have Spotify’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.) If none of these tunes do it for you, con­sid­er giv­ing iTunes’ 27th most pop­u­lar pod­cast, Sleep With Me, a chance. Or, let us know in the com­ments below what music, if any, helps calm your nerves and soothe your tired brain as you climb into bed after a long day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

Music That Helps You Write: A Free Spo­ti­fy Playlist of Your Selec­tions

Free Audio: Go the F–k to Sleep Nar­rat­ed by Samuel L. Jack­son

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness