Waiting Room

Sure, there are those among us who see the waiting room as something merely to be tolerated — a wood-paneled, magazine-papered holding cell fit for little besides, well, waiting. We here at iTunes beg to differ. Where else, we ask, are you required to do nothing but sit quietly and comfortably, and let yourself be winged away by the dulcet notes of Kenny G's "Songbird," or soothed into sumptuous relaxation on the calm seas of Christopher Cross' "Sailing"? We're with Chuck Mangione — sometimes that waiting-room decompression chamber just "Feels so Good."

Don't let them call your name just yet — more Waiting Room Essentials await in Next Steps.

When we're in a waiting room, we rarely stay there — presented with a prime opportunity for daydreaming, we like nothing more than to let the music take us far, far away. A trip to paradise is as easy as drifting along to the new age atmospherics of Enya's "Orinoco Flow." Then there's Neil Diamond, who bestows upon us a crisp and majestic autumn daybreak with "September Morn," while Seals & Crofts transport us, one and all, to the sunny bliss of a sweet "Summer Breeze." And when Bette Midler sings "Wind Beneath My Wings," we can, at last, lift off from our waiting–room sofa to whatever heights we care to reach.

Hey, we could stay here all day, especially when there's 25 more waiting-room evergreens holding out in Deep Cuts.

So, maybe it seems like everyone else has been called but you — you could have sworn you were here before that other guy. All the better, we say. More time in the waiting room means more time to catch up on that issue of Popular Mechanics from 1999, perhaps enjoy some delectable vending machine fare, and — best of all — indulge in more Waiting Room Essentials. Why not allow Climax to swaddle you in a downy blanket of romantic bliss with "Precious and Few." If glass-finish-smooth jazz is more your groove, we've got Dave Koz standing by, just waiting to build you a "Castle of Dreams." And when Richard Marx opens up on his soaring power ballad, we know there's no place we'd rather be than "Right Here Waiting."

The waiting room: purgatory or little slice of heaven? Well, there's usually a bowl of free candy, so that's good. And the magazines allow us to learn more about our cars and the solar system. Again, nice. Ah, but then there's the music. Heaven it is! Let 'em take their sweet time at the doctor's office, or wherever there's a seat and a lull — we've captured the waiting room's golden moments in song right here, from the soundtrack-to-a-daydream that first put our idle time to music, Percy Faith's "Theme from 'A Summer Place'," to Foreigner's "Waiting for a Girl Like You," which packs all the yearning and burning of epic romance into three minutes of cooled-out, piped-in bliss. From Barry's "Mandy" to Elton's "Daniel," George Benson's "Breezin'" to the Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe," these are the songs that guide us through life's seemingly endless holding patterns, and, frankly, we simply don't know how we'd wait without them.