Content Creator Megan here! How did an 1888 piano composition become one of the most-streamed instrumental songs on Spotify? Let’s talk about it.

Would you rather watch this FKIA as a video? Click over to our TikTok, where I will tell it to you! Did you know we’re on TikTok, by the way?

I don’t know about you, but when I was in college and needed to crank out a five-page paper the day before it was due, the only sounds that wouldn’t distract me were calm instrumentals and white noise (which is the story of how a 3-minute constant whirring sound called “Space” became my top Spotify song of 2018).

One collection of works that has become practically synonymous with the countless popular Peaceful Piano/Relaxing Piano/Songs for Sleeping-type playlists is Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédies.” Erik Satie was a French pianist and composer (who was expelled from his music conservatory at age 16 in 1882 due to poor performance). He began composing songs for the piano in the mid-1880s, and published “Gymnopédies No. 1” and “No. 3” in 1888, with “Gymnopédie No. 1” becoming arguably the most influential.

While “chill” and “relaxing” are certainly positive descriptors of songs these days, the “Gymnopédies” were considered subversive at the time. Satie’s stylings had neither the musical complexities of the 19th-century Romantic composers like Chopin, Brahms, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky, nor the emotional expressiveness. The “Gymnopédies,” Satie, and his contemporary Claude Debussy, were influences to the more simplistic, minimal Impressionist movement in France.

In 1917, Erik Satie coined the phrase “furniture music,” which refers to background music that blends into its environment and doesn’t draw attention to itself. This “furniture music” acted as a precursor to Brian Eno’s ambient music in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Gymnopédie No. 1” has proved to be quintessential background music for the last century and a half, as it has been featured in countless commercials, documentaries, and films like “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “My Dinner With Andre.”

As a society we have become almost unconsciously dependent on background music. A quiet office, store, or elevator feels incomplete and almost unsettling. I can’t help but think this wouldn’t be the case without the “Gymnopédies,” Erik Satie, and his “furniture music.”

With services like Spotify and YouTube, it is easier than ever to mindlessly throw on some background music to fill the empty space in any room, or to relax your mind through the power of peaceful piano. It’s no coincidence that the “Gymnopédies” can be heard on virtually every one of these curated playlists and have racked up well over 100,000,000 streams on Spotify alone.