Chill Guitar Playlist - 14 Relaxing Guitar Songs

What type of music do you like relaxing to? As guitarists, lots of us tend to focus on distortion, riffs and solos when we play. That’s because it's a lot of fun! But guitars are great for chilled, relaxing vibes too, and there are loads of great examples of that out there in the world.

Today, I’ve put together fourteen examples to serve as the start of a playlist for you. A few of them have vocals, and all of them have gorgeously relaxing guitar parts that are sure to have you floating off into your own private heavenly island of bliss.

Enjoy…

You can almost hear the waves lapping and the seagulls cawing in the background, can’t you? This masterful instrumental from the original Fleetwood Mac is a thing to cherish. For a while it was in food adverts for M&S, so let’s re-capture this song and give it the respect it deserves.

Peter Green and Danny Kirwan handle the beautiful twin guitar harmonies here.

Is The Division Bell an overlooked and underrated album? It’s definitely less angsty than the albums with Roger Waters, and there’s no end of exquisite guitar work throughout. David Gilmour seems to ride around in clouds on this record, and his perfect tones and phrasing are a sustained delight. 

I’ve picked this tune for no particular reason other than the fact that it sounds quite lovely. In an album full of gorgeous moments, this one is still a high point. Has a Stratocaster ever sounded better?

Maybe here! Following on from before, maybe this understated masterpiece from Hendrix tops Gilmour’s for prettiness? It’s a coin toss between them for who is the greatest practitioner of the Fender Strat, I think.

Little Wing is a psychedelic kaleidoscope of a song, marked out by that quite exceptional guitar intro. Proof, if any were needed, that Jimi was just as dazzling without the fuzz and volume as he was with it.

Icelandic ambience kings Sigur Rós have never been an easy band to peg. Playing music that flirts with post-rock, orchestral and ambient styles, there’s simultaneously singular and ever-shifting sound.

For most of us, it all started back with the sublime Ageatis Byrjun (an approximate spelling), a record that arrived at the tail end of the 90s filled with a richly mysterious atmosphere. The musical tone is difficult to put into words, and the sonics are sublime but not focussed into any particular style. Critics loved it but could still only call the album ‘whale music’ or ‘glacier rock’. Instead, I’d go with this word: wonderful.

This song has vocalist/guitarist Jonsi playing his guitar with a violin bow and a ton of reverb, which makes a sound that is both futuristic and ancient. A tenner says you’ll be Googling the prices of violin bows before this song is even done!

It’s tempting to simply fill up this entire list with deep cuts from this divine Grangemouth band. In so many ways, the Cocteau Twins were iconoclastic, and they stuck out in a most wonderful way in the 80s indie scene. As hard to describe sonically as Sigur Ros - whilst sounding nothing like them - they have their own universe of sound and language, and a body of work to dive into that shines and sparkles like a beach after a rainstorm.

It’s easy to roll your eyes at The Shadows because of their cheesy choreography and status as Cliff Richard’s backing band. But don’t act too cool about it, because you’ll miss some lovely music, like this track for instance. It sounds like it’s from some semi-fictional past: a dreamy late 50s/early 60s that was full of optimism, cadillacs and space rockets. Lead guitarist Hank Marvin’s Stratocaster twang has been the envy of players for over half a century, but it's his melodies and sense of timing that make the music so classic.

Increasingly, Radiohead have dabbled in more ambient, textural moods, compared to the angular rock moves of their early output. I suppose it was always there, but the In Rainbows record brought it to a place where such music was being played in a band format, instead of with synths and machines. House of Cards displays a side of the band that is both peaceful and widescreen at the same time, and has carefully created layers of sound that have loads of space as well as detail.

Despite a somewhat sadder, minor key tonality, this masterwork from Dire Straits is still a wonderfully relaxing piece of music. The accompaniment glows in the background like embers of an old fire, whilst Mark Knopfler’s weary, whispered voice allows plenty of space for the song’s real voice - his impossibly great sounding Les Paul - to make the most memorable contribution.

It’s obviously the part of the playlist where we need some more gravelly voiced older chaps, preferably with melodic guitar parts. The recently departed Chris Rea sustained a career for over 50 years, with several of his hit songs becoming drivetime classics.

On the Beach is one of his best-known tunes, and proves how effortless his style and sense of melody was. Is there a touch of Miami Vice about this?

I’ll stay down near the seaside for this next choice. Michael Hedges was the original acoustic innovator, from whom all Andy McKees and Jon Gomms spring from. His dedication to alternate tunings, game-changing body tapping techniques and innovative pickup systems put him on the map when literally nobody else was doing such things.

Dream Beach, though, is a deceptively simple composition. Comprised of acoustic guitar, flute, bass and not too much else, it’s a beautiful sunset of a song, when the sparkle of the shore is beginning to die down for the evening. The chord shapes are actually very complex - and the tuning is most unusual - but it is really rewarding to get this one under your fingers and just play it over and over.

Better known for their intense, screamed psycho-indie, the Pixies have in fact often brought down the mania and indulged in more reflective pieces. The Bossanova record was where the band’s surf music references began to float to the surface, and Havalina is a great example of this.

It’s a beautiful tune, with Joey Santiago’s sun-drenched guitar taking the lead for most of the song. Black Franics’ vocals - when they appear - are as blissed out as the rest of the music, which sounds like the sonic equivalent of a palm tree swaying on a beachside breeze.

Although this track is credited to This Mortal Coil, the only two people on the recording were both in the Cocteau Twins, so this is more or less another Cocteaus song! Of course, it’s actually a Tim Buckley cover, a 60s songwriter who was mostly forgotten until his son Jeff emerged and eclipsed him. Song to the Siren is easily his best known song, primarily for this version, which was a big cult hit in the 80s. 

This is a wonderful example of how much mileage you can get from doing very little on the guitar, with maximum effectiveness. TRIVIA: This was one of film director David Lynch’s all-time favourite songs.

Sleepwalk is one of those tunes that you’ve heard time and again over the years. It gets so familiar that it sometimes doesn’t register just how cool and well played the lap steel guitar part is. Santo and Johnny were brothers from Brooklyn, and Johnny Farina (the slide player) seems to still be touring at the age of 84! Legend!

For my final choice today, I knew it had to be this one. Z.Z’s Song is the final song from Satch’s Crystal Planet album, and it’s something that has stayed with me ever since I first heard it back in 1998.

Simple by anybody’s standards, the piece is literally one solo electric guitar that plays a gorgeous but somehow haunted melody. I think it has both major and minor musical things happening in here, but Joe’s restraint here is maybe the most powerful part, particularly for an artist acknowledged for being one of the world’s great shredders. I can’t think of a more perfect way to end this list than with this dream of a song.