How Chet Faker's Sound Became the Soundtrack to Every Coffee Shop

Nick Murphy, better known as Chet Faker, created the sonic template for the modern coffee shop. His 2014 debut Built on Glass, featuring the platinum single Talk Is Cheap and his cover of Blackstreet's No Diggity, established a sound so ubiquitous in cafes worldwide that you could argue he invented a subgenre.

The name is a joke about Chet Baker, which tells you where the vocal comes from. Murphy is from Melbourne, and that cover came first, recorded at home for the Thinking in Textures EP in 2012 and later licensed for a beer advert, which is how most people outside Australia first heard him. Built on Glass followed on Future Classic in 2014 and went straight to number one at home. Talk Is Cheap then topped Triple J's Hottest 100 for that year, which in Australia counts for more than a chart position.

The formula was deceptively simple: warm analog synths, understated beats drawn from downtempo electronic music, and Murphy's breathy baritone vocals floating above everything with effortless cool. The production was sophisticated enough for headphone listening but mellow enough to function as background music.

Talk Is Cheap became a cultural moment beyond music. The music video garnered hundreds of millions of views. The song appeared in commercials and TV shows and became one of the most Shazamed tracks in Australian history. It crossed from indie electronic circles to mainstream consciousness.

There is a duller reason his sound is everywhere, and it is licensing. A cafe in the UK cannot legally play a personal Spotify account through its speakers. It needs a PPL PRS licence, and most owners solve the problem by buying a commercial background-music service that supplies pre-cleared playlists. Those playlists are built to be inoffensive at low volume over an espresso machine, and downtempo soul with soft drums and a low breathy vocal is precisely what that brief asks for.

His pivot to releasing music under his real name, Nick Murphy, from 2016 to 2020 was commercially quieter but artistically rewarding. Albums like Missing Link explored more experimental territory with live instrumentation and stripped-back arrangements.

The return to the Chet Faker name with Hotel Surrender in 2021 represented an acceptance of his sonic identity while pushing it forward. The production became warmer and more organic. Songs like Low and Feel Good retained the coffee shop DNA but with deeper grooves and more confident songwriting.

Built on Glass is worth revisiting properly rather than through a playlist. It is deliberately two halves, the first built from programmed beats and synths, the second looser and more played-in, with Melt and 1998 doing things the singles never suggested. Whoever cut it down for a chill playlist took the four calmest tracks and left the record's actual argument behind.

Murphy's influence on the ambient-adjacent pop landscape is enormous. Artists like Tom Misch, FKJ, and Jordan Rakei all operate in sonic territory that Chet Faker helped define. The modern coffee shop playlist is essentially his invention, even when his songs aren't on it.

https://www.chetfaker.com/