13 Cozy Songs You Won’t Find On An AI Playlist

Setting the autumn scene

0:00You're heading to the wineries. It's a fall day in Missouri. Ooh, yeah. The leaves are changing. Yeah. Put a little pink moon in the car. It's cozy in that car. Okay, gotcha. It's not about it. The vibe is just hidden. Right.

0:15I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Music Explored. Explored, brought to you today by Open Studio. Go to opensudiojazz.com. Oh, your jazz lesson needs Peter? Yes. It's a cozy day. It's sweater weather in a lot of parts of the world. That's right. We're doing this episode because cozy has been co-opted by horrible AI playlists. Don't get me started. For some reason, it must be the easiest thing to program up is some cozy feeling music because

0:45it's just everywhere. This is AI that's been trained up on probably Bill Evans' trio for sure. For sure. And some other great recordings. A lot of the people on this list. Actually, yeah, that's probably true. But if you go to like chill coffee music or study music on YouTube or something, you'll get these playlists. And I get it. They serve a purpose, right? Yeah. To nauseate us. Well, to be background noise and to make you feel like there's something happening, but it's not really happening. And that tracks, actually. That's what happens. Right. It's like this weird music, non-music thing going on.

1:16Right. But this could be music, I think, that you could cozy up with your loved one or sitting with a book, not a pumpkin spice, a pumpkin spiceless latte. How about just a straight latte? Can we do that? I like a latte. Sure. All right. Well, let's trade off on our favorite cozy tracks for fall.

Shirley Horn and Norah Jones

1:32And what is your first track? I decided to start strong and just my hope is to totally annihilate you and that you're just going to be into submission. You're going to walk out of the room after you hear this. I mean, you got some bangers, but it's supposed to be cozy. Get ready to cozy up. Oh, yeah. Coming strong.

1:51Mm. Yeah. The temperature did just drop a couple of days. That's no complaints. Or did it just rise? And no regrets. I still believe in chasing dreams and placing bets. Man. But I have learned that all you give is all you get. So give it all you've got. I wish I was cuddled up in a book nook right now.

2:22Book nook. That's right. Oh, Shirley Horn. Flannel pajamas. Oh, my God. It doesn't get me.

2:30Her voice. The orchestration. The harp. The woodwinds. The keyboards. The harmonies. These are cozy harmonies, aren't they? I'm satisfied. I'm hungry still. Yeah, this song is like taking a hot shower after being out in the snow all day. You know? Shovel your driveway. You know the shower after the shovel? After the shovel. The shovel shower. Shovel shower. After you shoveled all the snow off your driveway and you're... And this is, of course...

3:00So here's to life. Here's to life, Shirley Horn. Here's to life, Shirley Horn. Yeah, so I mean, you know... Anybody who's at all familiar with this show knows that this is... I know. ...one of our favorite songs. Sue us, we love Shirley Horn. My first pick... Yes. I wanted to pick something that would rival your first pick. And so I picked someone... The first name that came to mind when I thought of like, what's cozy music to put on? Is an artist that we've never played on the show before. Really? Okay, this is overdue. I really, really enjoy. Yes. And that's this person.

3:36Mmm.

3:39Even her piano playing style is cozy. Very cozy. Cozy. Ah.

3:45Cozy guitar.

3:48Cozy brushes.

3:52Come away with me in the night. Man. The music she must have listened to when she was a kid leading up to this. Right. You can hear all these incredible influences. Of course, the great Nora Jones. Yes. Come away with me. Texas Finest. Yeah. Thank you, Nora. She kind of reinvigorated the cozy jazz vibe on Blue Note a little bit. It was a whole vibe when this album came out.

4:23Yeah. I mean, it kind of reinvigorated Blue Note. I know. It was an enormous, massive, Grammy Award-winning hit. Yes. Yeah. Millions. And to your pumpkin spice latte thing, mini copies sold at Starbucks. 100%. Remember that time? You couldn't walk into Starbucks without hearing this. 100%. Yeah. But an incredibly cozy, near, I mean, that's one of those albums that's like, it's perfect for, they nailed what they were going for. Cozy cover. I'm looking at the cover. By the way, Brian Blade all over that. That's right. That was, yeah, exactly. So my next one, this was a cozy song, The Nearness of You.

4:57I'm throwing that out there. Oh, yeah. But no, this is a young vocalist, youngish vocalist that we saw on Broadway last year who was playing the part of kind of the singer in Good Night and Good Luck. She was amazing. She was amazing. Georgia Hears. Yeah. Shout out to for that show, Joe Block, pianist on that show. Yes. Crush. He has a new record out, by the way. We should check that out. And Brian Carter, who was the MD. Yes. And this is, I'm sorry, I wasn't familiar with, Tyreek McDole on guitar.

5:34It's a cozy guitar tone. Yeah. It's cozy lyrics. Cozy everything.

5:42What a great voice.

5:48Oh, cozy vibrato, right? It's just the neatness. Very cozy intonation. Ooh. This is great, man. Cozy substitutions. I just want a note for our show here. Yeah. We are three songs into a playlist, all of them post-1980s. Wow.

6:18We're not entirely into this century, but we're getting close. That's pretty good for us. That is good. This actually, this is from a recent, I think it was from last year, from Georgia. But she's just one of my favorite. Samara Joy, Georgia Hears. I think we have some wonderful vocalists. Cecile. On the scene. Cecile, of course.

Nick Drake and Nicole McCabe

6:37Yeah, yeah. Of course. All right. I want to take it. I am going to take it back now to the 70s, to our comfort zone. The 1870s. But this is someone we recently talked about on the show and had some really good feedback of like, hey, I've never heard of this person before, which is surprising. But when I was thinking about the cozy stuff, actually, producer Caleb was in here and he's like, you got to do Nick Drake, Pink Moon, if you're doing cozy. And that's what we're doing. This is Nick Drake, Pink Moon. I saw it written and I saw it say, Pink Moon is on its way.

7:21So intimate, man. Yes. Another incredible voice.

7:53Great track and very intimate, incredible voice. But this might be the first little quandary you have here. Okay. Intimate, great, cozy, though. Pink Moon? Yeah. I would put Pink Moon in cozy. Lyrically, yes. Lyrically, yes. And also, even though, yes, the guitar is strumming. It's a little open road-ish, though, isn't it? It is a little open road-ish, but it is, I mean, you put, okay, great point. You're heading to the wineries. It's a fall day in Missouri. Ooh, yuck. The leaves are changing. You're out there in O'Fallon.

8:24Right. And you're heading out to Augusta. Yeah. Put a little Pink Moon in the car. It's cozy in that car. Okay. Gotcha. Open road and cozy. Got it. I mean, you know, don't drink and drive, kids. That's right. What's up, everybody? Adam here. And if you're digging all the great music that we listen to on the You'll Hear It podcast, and you're feeling the itch to dust off that instrument in the corner to learn some of these songs, we've got you covered. In my new ongoing course, The Players Club, I take songs right from the You'll Hear It podcast and teach you how to play them from scratch.

8:55And you're playing along with recordings of these great songs. No matter if you used to play years ago, but you want to get back into it, or you're starting from scratch, we're going to get you playing some of the greatest music ever made. Join us at The Players Club. Click the link in the show notes to learn more. Now back to the show.

9:13So now we're going to move on to something that you may push back on a little bit, but I've been listening to this record, and I really like it. And to me, it's got a cozy vibe. This is Nicole McCabe, who you may not know, great saxophonist. I've known her for some years now. She came through the Betty Carter program, as did a number of other incredible musicians that I was able to get acquainted with, but she's from, I believe, Los Angeles. Savannah Harris, great drummer, who's been working with Christian McBride and many others now. They did a duo record earlier this year, maybe last year, just saxophone and drums, which

9:45you might think, cool, but not cozy. But check this out.

9:55With a flower. Now there's like three things I want to add to this playlist. Well, I should have thought about that earlier.

10:03This is great, man. This is a great pick. Yeah. This is a great, so highly recommend both. I think there's Nicole and Savannah are two of the finest of the youngish crop of jazz musicians making a name for themselves. So, um, I just love listening to it.

10:33That's called With a Flower. Yeah, With a Flower. Nicole McCabe and Savannah Harris. Yeah, from their duets records. That's, of course, I'm assuming that's Nicole overdubbed with the beautiful saxophone choir.

Dangelo and Roberta Flack

10:43All right, I'm looking down our list now. There are some happening that are like, oh, well, these are, now we're in the obvious ones. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, um, Nora Jones wasn't obvious? Come on. That's actually true. That's actually true. Here's to life. But it's, but now we're getting into like, like this is even, so I chose a cover of something that could have made this list as the original. Oh, right. But we couldn't, well, but I, I prefer this cover to the original. I'm saying it right now. Shots fired. And we've, this is on, this show's maybe top album, D'Angelo's Voodoo. Yeah. This is D'Angelo's cover of Feel Like, Make and Love, originally made popular by Roberta,

11:16Roberta, Roberta, Roberta Flack. Flack. You okay? I'm fine. Let's take a quick trip back to the, sorry. Too soon. Go. Oh, this is a great pick. It doesn't feel cozy yet. Oh, it's cozy. It's about to, it's about to. Oh. The first Rhodes trinkle. Yeah, exactly.

11:47Woo. I was grooving. We just listened to this for the rest of the show. Yeah. I mean, D'Angelo's voice, uber cozy.

12:11The guitar. The Rhodes. Roy. Roy Holger. You know what, this is kind of, this is our first kind of cozy club. It's a perfect song. You're cozy up in the club. Oh, you're cozy. Like a little bass, like a small, not like, like a grown folks club. You're in a, you're in one of those like circular booths with the red leather and super dark. There's no dark, there's no, everybody looks great. Get yourself a drink in your hand. Everybody looks amazing. Yeah. Because it's so dark. You're 22 probably. Right. Woo. Cozy break. Oh, come on.

12:42Oh my God. Can we just do the D'Angelo? If this whole podcast was just a voodoo podcast, I'd be okay. We've literally gone through every one of his albums. Wait, that's not a bad idea though. Okay. You might've won on that one. Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway.

12:59Quiet Storming.

13:02Quiet Storm and Cozy. A little overlap.

13:09Woo. Man, that's so good. A little swirling, was that Juno synth? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I thought it was. It's from that era for sure. I said, yeah, company. Yep. That's a Juno 74.

13:31The closer I get to you. Roberta's voice is high level cozy. High level cozy. Yeah. Very restricted in the publishing world though. Great pull. Yeah. Great pull.

13:51And like, for Donny and Roberta, this isn't necessarily my favorite track, but I think it's the coziest. The cozy bridge harmony. It was real, the way you make me feel.

14:26Man, great.

14:28Great call. Yeah. Great call. We're trying out here, man. We're trying to get cozy. That's one of our, one of my favorite episodes we've done is the Roberta, Donny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Episode that we did. Okay. We just did an episode on this album. And when I was thinking of cozy tracks, I was like, there's got to be some Bill Evans. Oh. In some. And I think just because we just listened to this, this was on my mind. My Foolish Heart from Waltz for Debbie. Great, great, great.

14:52Cozy Jazz Club.

14:56This one's definitely been. I think this is like. Ripped from AI. Yeah, some of the low-level AI only, only got trained on this. That's true. Great training, but come on. Oh.

15:10All motion.

15:19Scott LaFaro, very cozy bass sound. The coziest of bass sounds, right? Like a warm blanket. Yeah.

15:29Imagine being down the vanguard when it's like 17 degrees upstairs. You got a big, heavy coat on. Right, because it's probably 56 downstairs. Take it off. Freeze your ass off, you know. I mean, the whole catalog, really. Is Bill Evans' trio the coziest of jazz trios? Yeah. It's up there. Maybe like Vince Giraldi is slightly cozier, you know? Everybody who's cozy after that was like so influenced by Bill Evans. I got someone who might write. The Brad Meldau trio is kind of intellectually cozy, right?

16:02Yeah, yeah. Some of it really is. Yeah. But they also can like go into rip mode sometimes, you know? So could Bill Evans. But I got an artist coming up that might, that definitely rivals Bill Evans as far as that.

Cassandra Wilson and Nat King Cole

16:14So next up I have, this is really, you know, a, we haven't spoken about this artist that we lost, I don't believe, on the podcast. Cassandra Wilson. Big loss. We just, just lost last month or within the last two months. One of the greatest vocalists of her generation, of our generation, and one of the most influential and I think will be going forwards and such, I mean, just one of those, one of those artists that I haven't even come to terms with that she's, we're not going to get to hear live.

16:44Did you ever get to play with her? I did get to play with her and it was one of the, I mean, I have so many memories at the House of Blues in New Orleans. Cool. Many, I mean, 30 plus, 30 years ago or something. But I got to hear her live and I played like, you know, Reginald Veal, Lonnie Plaxcox. Like she had such an impact with other great musicians. Yeah. She was this incredible singer, but an incredible band leader and musician within, you know, going back to the 80s. But this is from a record, it's not from one of her records. You're right about it. Just incredible ears. Like incredible musician. And my introduction to her was, I was into, when I was in high school, Jackie Terrasson,

17:18the pianist. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And he made a live album with her called Rendezvous. I think it was live. Oh yeah, Blue Note. Yeah, on Blue Note. Yeah, yeah. And that was my introduction to Cassandra and I was just blown away by how she was able to like mix it up with the trio. Yeah. And she didn't record a whole, I mean, she had great records. I mean, she had some huge records, but this was from Love Jones from the soundtrack, which was 1997, 96, which was one of my favorite movies. You know, just a great Chicago movie with an incredible soundtrack. You know, Maxwell and Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.

17:49I mean, the soundtrack is one of the best. That would be a good one for us to do for soundtracks. Anyway, Cassandra Wilson, You Move Me. This is so good. The thought of you kissing me there.

18:28You know my secrets. You know the curve and the line. One touch and I know you are mine.

18:58Just, oh, what a voice. And this is her song. She wrote this and wrote the lyrics and I'm pretty sure that's her arrangement because I know how she would work. Like she could boom, boom, ding, ding. It sounds very Cassandra Wilson. Yeah, she just had such a year for like simplicity, but really interesting little lines and she's missed. She's missed. Next up for me is an artist that is a lot of people think of when Christmas rolls around, but is great all year round. But, well, maybe.

19:28Boys to men? Nope. Okay. But, to me, any time of year is great for the great Nat King Cole, but especially fall for his ballads, like this great Irving Berlin tune, What'll I Do.

19:44This is, I think, 1953, early 50s. Early 50s. Woo. What'll I do when you are far away and I'm so blue?

20:14What'll I do? A piano trio without drums. It's already cozy, right? What'll I do? I mean, guitar, bass, piano. Quite possibly the most romantic singer of all time, along with people like Marvin Gaye, Barry White, of course, but like just an intense sophistication and romanticism about the tone of his voice, his phrasing, the instrumentation, the arrangements are all so beautiful and warm.

20:45Yeah. You know, very, very warm. Oh, and he played piano, too. And he played the hell out of piano. Great call. Great call. What'll I do? That's a beautiful song, too. We're going to go in a different direction now, and you want me to tell you what this is? You want me to surprise you? Surprise me. You might, you actually might know this. We'll see. Because you're kind of up on stuff. Here we go. Ooh.

21:08Fits the playlist already. Fits the playlist.

21:39I was trying to find something. I'm like, we can't only have vocals, right? Yeah.

21:57We can be modern jazz and cozy at the same time, right? Yeah, you can. It's okay. This is proving it. What is this? So this is Aaron Parks. Oh. Friend of the show, friend of Open Studios. This is from his new album. Right. Yeah, of course. Dense Fantasy with a PH. So it's fat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ben Street on bass. Ben Solomon. By all means, right? By all means, yeah. Billy Hart. Billy Hart. The great Billy Hart on drums. Yeah, yeah. I got to see this band, I think minus Billy Hart, at the Village Vanguard last winter. And I'll tell you what, it was cozy. It was cozy. Yeah, it was great. When we were up there for the Jazz Congress, we did our show up there.

22:30Seats were okay. Seats were okay. But I had my son, Ivan, with me and really enjoyed the show and got to hang out a little bit with Aaron afterwards and talk about it. It was fun. Awesome. Okay, my next poll. I'm going to zag. We're going to go away from the jazz for a little bit. And this is from Bon Iver's legendary first album for Emma forever ago. So this is, this whole album, Peter, if you don't know, which maybe you know this about Bon Iver, you probably do, because I know you're a huge Bon Iver fan. So you probably already know the lore. I love the way you're like, if you don't know, ha ha.

23:01For the listener. So Bon Iver is a man, actually, not a man. Are we talking about Boney James or Bon Iver? Bon Iver, like Good Winter. Oh, got you. Is an artist named Justin from Wisconsin. And the lore is like he had his heart broken and he went up to, you know, a hunting cabin in the middle of nowhere in northern Wisconsin and made this album in the cabin. This was like, I think, early 2010s or late 2000s where this would have been like kind

23:31of cool to do, like, still remote recording wasn't as what it is today where you can do anything from anywhere all the time. Where it's like, I'm going to this cabin. Oh, you just hit the crib. Got it. Yeah, yeah. This required a little bit more. But it's, it's, the whole album is so intimate and cozy and it's, and it's a great artist who had his heart broken. So that's always good. Yeah. This is re-Stacks, like regarding Stacks. And this is one of my favorite songs from this album. See you next time.

24:14Thank you.

24:44This my exclamation too, the day is cool. Everything that happens is from now on. This is boring, this is paralyzed.

25:19Isn't that great? Yeah, beautiful. Isn't that wonderful? Very cozy. Very cozy. Yeah, this is an album that kind of, at the time, took the world by storm a little bit. And even the likes of Peter Gabriel ended up covering songs off this album just because

25:52the vibe was right. You know how you've had some recordings where it's just like, it's all about it. The vibe is just hitting. Right.

Closing out with Michael Jackson

25:58Well, you kind of set me up for the last track. Talk about the vibes are just hitting, right? Better be good. How do we get to the end already? I don't know. I don't want to go back outside, man. Come on. I feel so cozy, man. I don't want to go see the horrible world that's waiting out there. All right, Caleb, put another log in the fire.

26:15This was good. Okay, I feel bad because I got the last track and I'm going to totally blow away everything I did and everything you did for cozy level.

26:24Why are you looking to be so... I'm skeptical. I mean, we've had a lot of cozy tracks. I'm just saying. I almost feel like I should... This is better than Here's to Life. This is better than Neck and Cole. I don't want to say that I started on Here's to Life and then I'm going to end on this, but I did. But you had some bangers in there. We all did. As did you. Okay, so for the last cozy, for the coziest of cozy, I just, you know when you're about to play something, even like a chord or a record or say something to somebody, and right at the last minute, you're like, wait, in this case, is this actually cozy? I know it's a great track.

26:55I know we've played it on Here before. I just had a little bit of doubt crept in as far as the... Because I was so cocky about the coziness. He's hedging everybody. I'm beyond hedging. He's backtracking big time. I'm willingly and openly backtracking. I don't know. Let me know. If nothing else, it's a great track, but I don't know. I thought it was cozy. Check it out.

27:14I don't need the mental language.

27:20I feel cozy, though. This is cozy. I feel shivers all up and down.

27:29I knew all this is cozy. It's later on I'm a little worried. That's cozy. He's cozy. He's cozy. He's cozy. Cozy backgrounds, right?

27:51Drums playing cozily. Cozy. This is definitely cozy. Okay. It fits the vibe. I'm thinking I had two minutes.

28:03Horns? Cozy? I don't think... Cozy doesn't mean everything has to be at a whisper. No, no, no. This is all cool. This is all cool. Cozy?

28:20Lyrics? Cozy AF. I can make you feel alright. And baby through the years... Cozy Melody.

28:35Cozy Harmony.

28:38Cozy Segway. Back to the intro. Come on. It's cozy.

28:46Cozy Bridge. You got one more. I think between the two of us, we said cozy 80 times each. Well, at least I didn't say pumpkin spice latte as much as you did. I said PSL. That's worse. That's worse. That's worse. This was fun, Peter. This was good, man. Happy autumn. Yeah, definitely happy autumn. Put in the comments. I love how we were like, welcome to autumn. Everything we talked about was winter. We're like, you know, it's December and you're the vanguard. Nobody ever said we were good at our jobs. Put in the comments what your favorite cozy tracks. I know we've missed so much. You could have put that whole John Coltrane, Johnny Hartman album on there.

29:16We didn't have any John Baker on there. John Coltrane ballads. Yeah, I mean, Carole King could have gone. She had a whole album. You missed some Fleetwood Mac. Dude. Yeah. All right, put in the comments what we missed. Miles Davis? Yeah, there's not an upset possible. All right, till next time. You'll hear it. I want you more to stay Cause you will always be the lady in my life Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me.