The best music to help you fall asleep and combat coronavirus anxiety

The sleep aid industry is expected to be worth $100 billion by 2023, and audio services from Spotify to Calm cater to the booming anxiety economy. In “Sleep Comes Down,” the Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler describes that same moment: “It’s raining in my head/But no tears come down/And I’m dreaming of you/Until sleep comes around.” British pop heartthrob Zayn describes nights spent “roaming and strolling all of these streets / Burning my eyes red — not slept for weeks.” “Everybody’s living or they’re dead,” sings Dustin Payseur of Beach Fossils in “Sleep Apnea.” “And I’m still in my bed / And I don’t have a clue.” Welcome to the club. This light sleeper has found that when the snores don’t come, the solution is peaceful instrumental electronic music, much of it of the German techno variety: the minimal electronic team Burger/Ink’s album “Las Vegas”; the multivolume Kompakt Records series called “Pop Ambient”; the peaceful concept album “Empire State Building” by Khan and Walker; and the collected work of Reinhard Voigt, who is one half of Burger/Ink and performs solo as Gas. The aim is to enter the zone similar to the one Icelandic musician Björk roams on “Headphones.” “Genius to fall asleep to your tape last night — so warm,” she sings, capturing the sensation of disappearing within music: “Sounds go through the muscles, these abstract wordless movements.” Her headphones saved her life, she concludes: “Your tape, it lulled me to sleep, to sleep, to sleep…” — Randall Roberts First, I want to say this: Stay the hell away from benzos. Today, half a decade later, I still don’t know much about Roberton-Jones, beyond the fact that she’s based in the U.K., as her website says, and “received an Angel visitation” in December 2000 “while severely ill in hospital.” Apparently that event inspired her to make these records, which set her recitations of stories about those four tiny creatures — their tea parties and their midnight dances and their magic paintbrushes — against tinkly slow-motion synth-scapes that feel like baby’s first New Age music.