Bossa nova can be described as breezy. Here are some of the best-known pieces:
Oh, I get chills down my spine from early U2, not breezy to me!
I actually have the following songs burned to CDs in my car that I listen to on long Sunday drives to pull me out of a funk:
Lovely Day and Just The Two of Us - both by Mr. Bill Withers.
Give Me the Night and On Broadway - both by Mr. George Benson
Sunday Morning - Spanky and Our Gang
Silver Threads and Golden Needles - The Springfields
We’ll Sing In the Sunshine - Gale Garnett
Make Me Smile - Chicago
Itchykoo Park - the Small Faces
The Rain, the Park and Other Things - the Cowsills
Yeah, I’m old. All those songs take me back to when I was young and life was better. There are more, can’t think right now…The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, The Drifters….
Is that a cover of the Velvet Underground song? Because the original definitely fits this thread.
What a great list!
This one’s a must for me whenever the weather starts turning springy.
No. It has nothing to do with drug addicts crawling home after a binge. Spanky and Our Gang specialized in feel-good songs, slightly bittersweet about love and connection, not injecting heroin and vomiting in the gutter. Just my opinion what constitutes breezy and ephemeral.
We will never recapture those days or that time, when all the world was ahead of us and the future was bright.
All I could think of was “Summer Breeze” by Seals & Crofts. That’s my literal mind for you.
Well, a common denominator is that they’re all ballads played much softer than what the band’s capable of.
Compare… well, I was going to list each artist’s “usual” fare ("Compare Eternal Flame to Walk Like an Egyptian; or Amanda to Rock’n’Roll Band."), but that’d make a long post of all-too-evident songs.
Hmmm, how do you feel about Sister Christian or Beth?
.
ps: Thank you, kind Dopers, for introducing me to some great examples of ‘Soft Music For Hard Times’!
How could I have forgotten that?!? 
How about the quintessential Breezy, ephemeral song?
Windy - The Association
Sailing - Christopher Cross
. wonderful choice
Excellent
Haven’t thought about this one in years, now it’s become an earworm again!
The perfect song for listening to with your SO under the covers late at night:
And now for something completely different:
Merril Bainbridge produced two fantastic albums in the 90s ful of songs like that, then AFAIK completely disappeared.