| Yacht rock | |
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| Other names |
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| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Mid-1970s – mid-1980s |
| Derivative forms | |
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Yacht rock (originally known as theWest Coast sound[4][5] oradult-oriented rock[6]) is a broad music style and aesthetic[7] commonly associated withsoft rock,[8] one of the most commercially successful genres from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Drawing on sources such assmooth soul,smooth jazz,[1]R&B, anddisco,[7] common stylistic traits include high-quality production, clean vocals, and a focus on light, catchy melodies.[6] The termyacht rock was coined in 2005 by the makers of the online comedy video seriesYacht Rock, who connected the music with the popularSouthern Californian leisure activity ofboating. It was considered a pejorative term by some music critics.[6]
The termyacht rock did not exist contemporaneously with the music the term describes,[6] which was produced from 1975 to 1984.[7][8] It refers to "adult-oriented rock"[6] or the "West Coast Sound",[4][3] which became identified with yacht rock in 2005, when the term was coined in J. D. Ryznar et al.'sonline video series of the same name.[9][10][11] Many "yacht rockers" included nautical references in their lyrics, videos, and album artwork, exemplified byChristopher Cross's anthemic track, "Sailing" (1979).[12] Long mocked for "its saccharine sincerity and garish fashion", the original stigma attached to the music has lessened since about 2015.[6][3]
In 2014,AllMusic's Matt Colier identified the "key defining rules of the genre:"
The "exhilaration of escape" is "essential to yacht", according to journalist and documentary filmmakerKatie Puckrik. She quoted the lyrics of Cross's "Ride Like the Wind" (1979), "to make it to the border of Mexico", as an example of the aspirational longing that demonstrates "the power of the genre". Thwarted desire is another key element that counters the "feelgood bounce" of yacht in the same song. Puckrik identified a sub-genre, "dark yacht", exemplified inJoni Mitchell's "accidental yacht rock" song "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" (1975), which described the "tarnished love" of "a woman trapped in a big house and a loveless marriage".[13]
According to Mara Schwartz Kuge, who worked in the L.A. music industry for two decades, "Soft rock was a genre of very popular pop music from the 1970s and early 1980s, characterized by soft, mostly acoustic guitars and slow-to-mid tempos ... most people have generalized the term to mean anything kind of soft-and-1970s-ish, including artists likeRupert Holmes. Not all yacht rock is soft, either: Toto's 'Hold the Line' and Kenny Loggins' 'Footloose' are both very yacht rock but not soft rock."[14]
Comprehensively defining yacht rock remains difficult, despite agreement that its central elements are "aspirational but not luxurious, jaunty but lonely, pained but polished". Journalist Jack Seale stated that, as in other "micro-genres", certain albums of artists who are accepted as proponents are "arbitrarily ruled in or out". For example,Michael Jackson'sThriller (1982) is accepted as yacht rock, butFleetwood Mac'sRumours (1977) is not.[15]
Yacht Rock web series co-creators Ryznar, Steve Huey, Hunter Stair, and David Lyons have attempted to apply precision to what is defined as yacht rock, and have been critical of overly expansive definitions of the term. In 2016, they invented the term "nyacht rock" to refer to songs that have sometimes been classified as yacht rock but that they felt did not fit the definition.[16][17] On their podcastsBeyond Yacht Rock andYacht or Nyacht?, they have categorized various songs as being either within or outside of the genre.[18]
Factors that the four list as relevant to yacht rock include:
Ryznar and company have argued that many artists sometimes associated with yacht rock, particularly the folk-driven soft rock ofGordon Lightfoot andEagles, fall outside the scope of the term as originally conceived.[5] They have also disputed the use of the term as an umbrella for any song whose lyrics include nautical references, opting for the term "marina rock" for bands close to the scene but lacking a few elements, such asRupert Holmes andHall & Oates.[5][17] The term's inventors considerMichael McDonald the most influential yacht rock artist.[21]
The socio-political and economic changes that contributed to the emergence of the genre[22] have recently been described by journalists like Steven Orlofsky, and by documentary-film makerKatie Puckrik. Orlofsky pointed out that some contemporaneous pop groups such asFleetwood Mac,Steely Dan, andSupertramp were well-respected by critics and listeners.[23] Yacht rock was art "untouched by the outside world". By contrast to what followed, it "was probably the last major era of pop music wholly separated from the politics of its day".[3] Yacht rock represented an "introspective individualism" that emerged after the death of the "mass-movement idealism" of the 1960s. Its "reassuringly vague escapism" was boosted by the rise ofFM radio which brought together two consequences of gender emancipation: women who controlled household spending and men who "felt freer to convey their emotions in song".[15]
The roots of yacht rock can be traced to the music ofthe Beach Boys, whose aesthetic was the first to be "scavenged" by acts like Rupert Holmes, according toJacobin's Dan O'Sullivan.Captain & Tennille, who were members ofthe Beach Boys' live band, won a Best Record Grammy in 1975, for "Love Will Keep Us Together", a song that composerNeil Sedaka acknowledged was inspired in part by a Beach Boys riff.[24] O'Sullivan also cites the Beach Boys recording of "Sloop John B" (1966) as the origin of yacht rock's predilection for the "sailors and beachgoers" aesthetic that was "lifted by everyone, fromChristopher Cross toEric Carmen, from 'Buffalo Springfield' folksters likeJim Messina to 'Philly Sound' rockers like Hall & Oates".[25]
Some of the most popular yacht rock acts (who also collaborated on each other's records) included Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross,Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, andToto.[12][26][27][10]
Around 2016, positive reappraisals of the genre began to appear inThe Guardian,[28]The Week,[3] and onBBC Four, which broadcast Puckrik's two-part documentary,I Can Go for That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock, in June 2019.[15][29] (That documentary is a play on the 1981Hall & Oates song "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)".)[13]
Orlofsky has argued that the genre's resurgence is partly due to its function as an antidote to the negativity of the post-Obama era in the US just as in its original context, when yacht rock created "the perfect soundtrack for listeners trying to ignoreWatergate andVietnam",[15] it now again represents "a defiant, fingers-planted-firmly-within-ears disregard of any and all political unrest".[3]
New yacht rock bands have formed to cater to fans. Among the bands areYoung Gun Silver Fox from London,[30]Yacht Rock Revue from Atlanta,[31] andYachtley Crew from Los Angeles.[32]
A 2012Jacobin article described yacht rock as "endlessly banal, melodic and inoffensive, fit to be piped into Macy's changing rooms".[33] The article describes the popularity of yacht rock as reflective of a regressiveReagan-era American society and "about the garden of nightmares America had become". According to theJacobin article, yacht rock served as "an escape from blunt truths" about sociopolitical issues of the day. In an article inThe New Inquiry, music scholar J. Temperance stated that yacht rock "sterilized the form of itssoul andblues elements and instead emphasized disinterested, intentionally trite lyrical themes".[34] In a uDiscovermusic article, Paul Sexton expressed how yacht rock as a genre seemed to "exude privileged opulence: of days in expensive recording studios followed by hedonistic trips on private yachts".[35] According to writer Max McKenna in a 2018Popmatters article, the lack of political messaging in the yacht rock genre is a "conservative gesture(s) flying under the radar in a climate ofpoptimist reappraisal".[36]
In response to theJacobin article, music scholar J. Temperance wrote inThe New Inquiry that, rather than being a reactionary genre, yacht rock was essential to the growth of pop music in a time of "cultural darkness", "serving as a dialectical pole toprogressive rock as well as topunk,postpunk and even proto-postpunk, spurring drastic retrenchments".[34] J. Temperance attributed the "smooth" sound that is characteristic of yacht rock to an indifferent approach to capitalist culture and a "regressive tolerance of allegedly transgressive music with a truly liberatory anality" by using existing symbols rather than create new anti-establishment symbols that are eventually added into the establishment symbols. TheNew Inquiry article describes the role of yacht rock as a genre that would help people differentiate music appreciation from status by using common symbols and "rendering the popular into the smooth".[34]
Yacht rock had also faced racial criticism, given the genre's associations with "the revival of white rock forms" as writer Max McKenna stated in the 2018Popmatters article.[36]Wesley Morris compares in aNew York Times op-ed piece the recognition given to black artists and white artists who possess the "absurd" quality of blackness in their music.[37] Due to its perceived lack of political involvement and borrowed elements from black music genres, yacht rock has garnered the perception of racial ignorance amongst certain critics of the genre.[37] TheJacobin article describedMichael McDonald, a musician well known within the genre of yacht rock, as a "bleached, blue-eyed soulcracker".[33]
Yacht rock is listed as a genre onSpotify,Amazon Music,AccuRadio, andPandora. Since 2015, there has been a "Yacht Rock" channel onSirius XM Satellite Radio. The channel reverts to the off-season channel after summer,[38] but is available year-round on the SXM app.iHeartRadio also has a dedicated "Yacht Rock Radio" station that airs this format 24/7 on its website and app.[39]
In 2018, Jawbone Press releasedThe Yacht Rock Book: The Oral History of the Soft, Smooth Sounds of the 70s and 80s by author Greg Prato, which explored the entire genre's history.[40] The book featured a foreword byFred Armisen (who would later spoof the genre on an episode of theEmmy Award-nominatedmockumentary seriesDocumentary Now withBill Hader as the fictional band known as The Blue Jean Committee and released the album of the same name[20]), and interviews withChristopher Cross,Kenny Loggins, andJohn Oates, among others.[17]
In 2024, HBO Max releasedYacht Rock: A Dockumentary, directed by Garrett Price. The documentary received a cumulative 91% rating onRotten Tomatoes.[41]Rick Beato, a music producer, and Youtube educator, said "I find that term, yacht rock, completely offensive". In a video, Beato argues that the genre and the documentary try to group artists with very different styles.[42]
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