Are The Eagles Yacht Rock?

Yacht rock, originally known as the West Coast sound or adult-oriented rock, is a broad music style and aesthetic commonly associated with soft rock. It is the musical equivalent of a mid-afternoon mimosa nap in a nautical location, with the substance of a romance novel and the soft, smooth sounds released between the warm weather and long weekends. Other artists seen as yacht rock representatives include Daryl Hall, John Oates, Journey, the Eagles, and Canada’s Gordon The Eagles.

The internet is filled with heated conversations and passionate debates among purists about what truly constitutes Yacht Rock. However, given its commitment to its easy-going style featuring smooth vocals and polished production, Yacht Rocks are considered the best. The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Toto were the founding fathers of this sound, with hits like Take it Cult rarity by the late Alaskan singer-songwriter. Some common artists in the yacht rock genre include The Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Christopher Cross, Robbie Dupree, Daryl Hall, John Oates, Fleetwood Mac, Michael McDonald, Rupert Holmes, Toto, and Steely Dan.

Ryznar and company have argued that many artists sometimes associated with yacht rock, particularly the folk-driven soft rock of Gordon Lightfoot and the Eagles, are not yacht rock at all. Many Eagles tunes could be classified as yacht rock, but their finest example comes from their 1979 track “The Long Run” from their album “The Long Run.”

The result is that most artists associated with yacht rock aren’t yacht rock, with some being just 80s FM pop ballads and others more or less Country Western. The Eagles, though not a Yacht Rock group, have one hit that is unadulterated, “YR: I Cant Tell You Why.”

Who is the godfather of yacht rock?

Michael McDonald #michaelmcdonald #ikeepforgettin #whatafoolbelieves #takinittothestreets #yachtrock.

What makes music yacht rock?

Yacht rock bears strong similarities to the Japanese genre of city pop in that they both peaked in the early 1980s, featured jazz and R&B influences arranged and produced by elites in their fields, and gained newfound popularity in the 2010s through the Internet. The link between city pop and yacht rock was made explicit in 1984 when Tatsuro Yamashita, one of Japan’s most influential city pop artists and producers, traveled to California to record the album Big Wave, a mix of Beach Boys covers and original English-language compositions written in collaboration with Alan O’Day.

Yacht rock had some influence on the creation of progressive rock, punk rock, postpunk, and proto-postpunk.

Elements of yacht rock have been adopted by new acts such as Vampire Weekend, Foxygen, and Carly Rae Jepsen, while the vaporwave genre of electronic music, which began in the 2010s, appropriated the “nautical iconography” of yacht rock.

What the heck is yacht rock?

Yacht rock is a genre of music that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, characterized by smooth, melodic, and often soft rock songs with a nautical or coastal theme.

This begins with a post I saw yesterday in an 80s Facebook group that read “Who remembers Yacht Rock”. One person asked, “What the f**k is Yacht Rock lol!”

So It Goes Like This. Yacht Rock is that music that only cool, old rich white men listen to, it is exactly what it reads. You are sitting at the bay watching the silvery sunshine on the calm water, jet skis dashing here and there. You take a sip of your beer and a big, beautiful yacht drifts by, and playing very loudly over its sound system is Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” song.

Chillin on the nose of this yacht are some young women dancing around in bikinis, with a drink in one hand. Then you see on the deck of the ship, the owner, an old white man who looks like he’s in his 60s and used the tanning bed too much; for years! Though this man is old, dry-skinned, and balding, he still thinks he’s got it going on.

Are Eagles classic rock?

Everyone knows what classic rock is, right? It’s Led Zeppelin, Queen, the Stones, the Eagles and the like. It’s men in tight trousers singing about red hot mommas, while other men in tight trousers play their guitars with their feet on the monitors. It’s the sound of the 1970s, of vast arenas in the Midwest – such as Detroit’s Cobo Hall, where Bob Seger and Kiss both recorded landmark live albums. It’s an American radio format – the sound of baby boomers at play – for listening to while driving down open roads in a vast landscape.

It’s certainly been that. But maybe it’s becoming something different now. Maybe it’s now Nirvana, and Pavement, and Hole and the like. Perhaps it’s men and women singing about how woeful life is while guitarists stare at their shoes. Perhaps it’s the sound of the 1990s, of sweaty clubs in big cities, of bedrooms festooned with posters. Perhaps it’s the music of TV soundtracks, or a TikTok phenomenon. Perhaps it’s the sound of Gen Xers at play, migrating to a new generation. Maybe alt-rock is now the generic nostalgic touchstone for some long-lost halcyon days.

Certainly, Nineties-style alt-rock feels very prevalent at the moment. It’s there in young bands: Bar Italia, the hip young British indie band who are signed to the venerable Matador label, sound very much as though they could have been signed to Matador in 1993. Anyone who goes to new band nights will see groups faithfully recreating the sound of The Dublin Castle in north London 30 years ago. It’s all over TV: the soundtrack to The Bear, about a restaurant in Chicago, was dripping not with the soundtrack of modern-day Chicago, but with REM and Wilco and The Replacements – the sound of middle-aged white people, despite its multi-ethnic and largely young cast.

Is Fleetwood Mac considered yacht rock?

But even these roughly outlined “rules” can be flouted and still considered yacht rock. Plenty of bands that are typically deemed “nyacht” rock have made their attempts at the genre: Crosby, Stills & Nash got a bit nautical with “Southern Cross,” leading with their famed tightly knit harmonies, and Fleetwood Mac also entered yacht rock territory with “Dreams” – which, although lyrically dour, offers a sense of melody in line with yacht rock.

Given its undefined parameters, the genre has become one of music’s most expansive corners. From No. 1 hits to deeper-cut gems, we’ve compiled a list of 50 Top Yacht Rock Songs to set sail to below.

Younger generations might be more apt to recognize Jay Ferguson from his score for NBC’s The Office, where he also portrayed the guitarist in Kevin Malone’s band Scrantonicity. But Ferguson’s musical roots go back to the ’60s band Spirit; he was also in a group with one of the future members of Firefall, signaling a ’70s-era shift toward yacht rock and “Thunder Island.” The once-ubiquitous single began its steady ascent in October 1977 before reaching the Top 10 in April of the following year. Producer Bill Szymczyk helped it get there by bringing in his buddy Joe Walsh for a soaring turn on the slide. The best showing Ferguson had after this, however, was the quickly forgotten 1979 Top 40 hit “Shakedown Cruise.” (Nick DeRiso)

What music is considered yacht rock?

I’m here to set the record straight—or smooth. Yacht rock is music, primarily created between 1976 and ‘84, that can be characterized as smooth and melodic, and typically combines elements of jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock. You’ll hear very little acoustic guitar (get that “Horse With No Name” out of there) but a lot of Fender Rhodes electric piano. Lyrics don’t get in the way of the song’s usually high musicality (some of the finest Los Angeles session players, including members of the band Toto, play on many yacht rock tunes.) The lyrics may, however, speak about fools. The songs are as light and bubbly as champagne on the high seas, yet oddly complex and intellectual.

And just to hammer this home: Fleetwood Mac is not yacht rock. Daryl Hall & John Oates are 98 percent not yacht rock. Those folkie songs from America, Pure Prairie League, and Crosby, Stills & Nash? Nope. Rupert Holmes’s “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”? Too wordy and not musically interesting—not yacht rock. How about “Summer Breeze” by Seals & Crofts? A little too folky, but close.

I’m not affected by personal nostalgia (I was born in 1984, just as the yacht rock era was ending); instead, I’m an objective music lover who just so happens to have been researching yacht rock for the past several years. I know the men who coined the term “yacht rock” (they have a great podcast and actually rate whether or not a song is yacht rock), and they can back me up on this.

Who is the king of yacht rock?

The term is meant to suggest the kind of smooth, mellow music that early yuppies likely enjoyed while sipping champagne and snorting cocaine on their yachts. Significant “yacht rockers” include Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, and Toto.”

While the excessive ’80s are long gone, the specter of Yacht Rock still floats on. Which is precisely why we decided to count down our Top 10 favorite Yacht Rock songs of all time (with a few “honorable mentions” tossed in for good measure).

So grab your bubbly, your skipper’s cap, and a scantily clad femme fatale with a fake tan and crank the Nakamichi up to 11.

Of course no Top 10 list, especially one dedicated to such a maligned sub-genre as Yacht Rock, would be complete without a few Honorable Mentions:

Are the Eagles country or rock?

Country rock The Eagles are an American band best known for their role in establishing country rock as a mainstream music genre.

The Eagles, American band that cultivated country rock as the reigning style and sensibility of white youth in the United States during the 1970s. The original members were Don Henley (b. July 22, 1947, Gilmer, Texas, U.S.), Glenn Frey (b. November 6, 1948, Detroit, Michigan—d. January 18, 2016, New York, New York), Bernie Leadon (b. July 19, 1947, Minneapolis, Minnesota), and Randy Meisner (b. March 8, 1946, Scottsbluff, Nebraska—d. July 26, 2023, Los Angeles, California). Later members included Don Felder (b. September 21, 1947, Topanga, California), Joe Walsh (b. November 20, 1947, Wichita, Kansas), and Timothy B. Schmit (b. October 30, 1947, Sacramento, California).

Los Angeles-based professional pop musicians, the Eagles recorded with Linda Ronstadt before the 1972 release of their eponymous debut album. Clearly, from the band’s earliest laid-back grooves on hits like “Take It Easy” to the title song of their 1973 Desperado album—the “Ave Maria” of 1970s rock—to the later studio intricacies of One of These Nights, Henley’s band felt a mission to portray emotional ups and downs in personal ways. However, the Eagles were content to do so within the boundaries of certain musical forms and music industry conventions, pushing and expanding them gently or aggressively at different junctures along the way. This willingness to play by the rules may have been as responsible for the success of their resolutely formal, exceptionally dramatic songs as was the Eagles’ hankering for the fiddles and dusty ambiences of the country rock movement they polished for popular consumption.

Before the Eagles recorded, country rock was a local alternative in late 1960s Los Angeles. After they recorded, it became the soundtrack for the lives of millions of 1970s rock kids who, keen on the present yet suspicious of glam rock and disco, donned suede jackets and faded jeans to flirt with the California dream restyled as traditional Americana.

Is America considered yacht rock?

Hall & Oates and Toto (and Kenny Loggins in some ways) succeed, in my opinion, better in this genre than the pop ‘80s, even though that era is when they had mega hits. Jackson Brown, Fleetwood Mac, Herb Albert, Boz Scaggs, Joe Jackson, America and Lionel Ritchie also have a few Yacht Rock tunes.

Musicians that I am newly introduced to with my Yacht Rock summer binge: Paul Davis, Ambrosia, Robbie Dupree.

Totally cool Yacht Rock moment: realizing there are YR artists with sailing references in their name! Pablo Cruise, Billy Ocean, Captain and Tennille and maybe these are a stretch but Dr. Hook and Seals & Crofts. Let’s include Air Supply too because it’s kind of like wind which you need for the sails. Ah, I love it.

Where are the Women of Yacht Rock?. Women are noticeably absent from my summer-long SiriusXM binge of these fab tunes. I get into that more with my intense Women of Yacht Rock investigation (AKA I have a few questions about the lack of ladies).

Are the Eagles California rock?

This Southern California country rock band gave rock a litany of hits: “Take It Easy,” “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” “Witchy Woman,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “The Best of My Love,” “Lyin’ Eyes,” “Desperado,” “Hotel California” and we could go on.

The Eagles soared above the rapidly changing landscape of America in the Seventies, casting the social mores of those high-flying years into keenly observed songs that everyone came to know by heart.

In their flight across a decade that they defined as authoritatively as any band, the Eagles mirrored the larger changes taking place in society. They began as wide-eyed innocents with a country-rock pedigree and ended as purveyors of grandiose, dark-themed albums chronicling a world of excess and seduction that had begun spinning seriously out of control.

Who is the father of yacht rock?

Christopher Cross is known for two things: The first artist to sweep the “Big Four” Grammy Awards in one year (best album, song, record and new artist, in 1981) and the unwitting father of yacht rock.

However, he’d be happy to do without the yacht rock label, inspired by the title of his Grammy-winning song “Sailing” and applied retroactively to an assortment of 1980s lite-FM pop-rock.

“It pigeonholes you into one time in your career. I continue to make records. I’ve made 12 albums. It precludes people from hearing or being aware of your later work. For me, it’s about writing and making music. That’s why I got into it and that’s why I do it. With my new boxed set (‘The Complete Works’), I’m trying to draw people into my later catalog.”

Why do they call it yacht rock?

The term is a nod to artists a yuppie would listen to on their yacht, and the creators have very specific factors that determine if a song is yacht rock (high production value, jazz and R&B influences, use of electric piano, lyrics about heartbroken, foolish men according to Wikipedia); it’s not an umbrella term for boating season songs despite the fact some of the biggest Yacht Rock hits include sailing, summer and pina colada lyrics. What makes a song Yacht Rock worthy is much more nuanced than I would’ve guessed.

If you remember the mellow music from the ‘70s you can probably hear a few notes of Yacht Rock in your head right now.

Who created Yacht Rock?. In 2005 J.D. Ryznar and his friends coined the term “Yacht Rock” and made a short-film/online series about the musical genre. From what I can tell it’s a mix of true appreciation and playful jabbing at the music of that era, which if you listen to the tunes, is a fair depiction.