Yacht Rock, a term coined in 2005 by the creators of the online video series Yacht Rock, was connected to the popular Southern Californian leisure activity of boating. The genre was characterized by its smooth production and polished sound, with artists like Loggins Messina, Hall Oates, and Steely Dan playing prominent roles. Yacht Rock emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as a soothing response to the heavy and aggressive nature of rock music at the time.
The term yacht rock was initially considered a pejorative term by some music critics. However, it became known in the mid 2000s due to a tongue-in-cheek approach. Yacht Rock is characterized by smooth and melodic music that typically combines elements of slick rock from the 1970s with nautical themes. The show follows the fictionalized lives and careers of American soft rock stars of the late 1970s and early 1980s, focusing on the careers of these artists.
Yacht Rock has a rich history, dating back to the early 20th century when yacht rock pillar Kenny Loggins split up with his songwriting partner. The genre has evolved over time, with the show focusing on the careers of American soft rock stars and their iconic songs. The show’s success has been attributed to its ability to connect the music to the popular Southern Californian leisure activity of boating, despite criticisms of its pejorative nature.
📹 What The Heck Is Yacht Rock?
It’s a sub-genre of a lot of different music. Here are my thoughts on breaking it down.
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 is Jimmy Buffett not yacht rock?
Now enter Buffett. Sharp production? Check. Sophisticated harmonies? Debatable to some, but to Buffett fans, check. Topics covered? Summer love, boating and relaxing on the beach. Check. Buffett’s initial years of popularity overlap with the classics of the genre. The limiting factor? Buffett made his tropical sound in New Orleans and Florida, not LA.
The fact that a simple geographic difference can immediately discount a song or artist from a genre is astonishing. Stringent genre classifications are flawed when it comes to the subjectivity of music. Despite set, making hard and fast rules about musical classifications will never satisfy everyone’s heuristics about genre. To me and many others, Buffett meets all the criteria of yacht rock.
Though Buffett may be a silly example, the issue runs deeper. Music creation and listening is more accessible than ever, and it’s commonplace for artists to make music wholly for themselves, avoiding classification by one genre. Genre labels are becoming increasingly arbitrary. Yet as this happens, the industry seems to be doubling down on genre classification. The Grammy’s saw this issue in 2020, when they awarded Tyler, The Creator “Best Rap Album” for Igor, an album most would not consider exclusively rap, sparking controversy about the racial bias in the award categories. Even streaming services emphasize genre classification, although with a much wider lens. Spotify artificial intelligence renders a “Daylist” that finds music for users by algorithmically using genre, accounting for more nuanced classifications that use bizarre genres such as “Surf,” “Golf,” and even “Swedish Cat” to describe a playlist.
Although I don’t think Spotify is on to anything revolutionary with the “Daylist,” this does demonstrate how arbitrary labeling can be. Today’s music is a diverse, never-ending soundscape. Any one genre usually has more exceptions than clear definitions. As a listener, by limiting yourself to a single genre, you miss out on multitudes that exist.
Is yacht rock just soft rock?
Yacht rock is a form of soft rock that is fun and mellow. It should keep people feeling happy and relaxed and therefore can be a good choice for background music in your store.
Music is an important element in a retail or store environment, as it can set the mode and tone for the environment. Playing the right music can keep customers engaged and encourage them to stay in your store longer. Because of this, they can potentially end up spending more money.
Yacht rock is a genre of music made between 1976 and 1984 in Southern California. It is a mellow kind of soft rock that often has a high level of musicality encompassing elements of rock, jazz, and rhythm and blues.
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:
What started Yacht Rock?
The roots of yacht rock can be traced to the music of the Beach Boys, whose aesthetic was the first to be “scavenged” by acts like Rupert Holmes, according to Jacobin’s Dan O’Sullivan. Captain & Tennille, who were members of the Beach Boys’ live band, won “yacht rock’s first Best Record Grammy” in 1975, for “Love Will Keep Us Together”, a song that composer Neil Sedaka acknowledged was inspired in part by a Beach Boys riff. O’Sullivan also cites the Beach Boys recording of “Sloop John B” as the origin of yacht rock’s predilection for the “sailors and beachgoers” aesthetic that was “lifted by everyone, from Christopher Cross to Eric Carmen, from ‘Buffalo Springfield’ folksters like Jim Messina to ‘Philly Sound’ rockers like Hall & Oates”.
Some of the most popular yacht rock acts (who also collaborated on each other’s records) included Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and Toto.
Recent positive reappraisals of the genre have appeared in The Guardian, The Week, and on BBC Four, which broadcast Puckrik’s two-part documentary, I Can Go for That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock, in June 2019. (That documentary is a play on the 1981 Hall & Oates song “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)”.)
What started yacht rock?
The roots of yacht rock can be traced to the music of the Beach Boys, whose aesthetic was the first to be “scavenged” by acts like Rupert Holmes, according to Jacobin’s Dan O’Sullivan. Captain & Tennille, who were members of the Beach Boys’ live band, won “yacht rock’s first Best Record Grammy” in 1975, for “Love Will Keep Us Together”, a song that composer Neil Sedaka acknowledged was inspired in part by a Beach Boys riff. O’Sullivan also cites the Beach Boys recording of “Sloop John B” as the origin of yacht rock’s predilection for the “sailors and beachgoers” aesthetic that was “lifted by everyone, from Christopher Cross to Eric Carmen, from ‘Buffalo Springfield’ folksters like Jim Messina to ‘Philly Sound’ rockers like Hall & Oates”.
Some of the most popular yacht rock acts (who also collaborated on each other’s records) included Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and Toto.
Recent positive reappraisals of the genre have appeared in The Guardian, The Week, and on BBC Four, which broadcast Puckrik’s two-part documentary, I Can Go for That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock, in June 2019. (That documentary is a play on the 1981 Hall & Oates song “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)”.)
Where did Yacht Rock Revue start?
Yacht Rock Revue is an American rock band formed in Atlanta, Georgia in 2007. The band was formed by members of the now defunct indie rock band Y-O-U after an ironic performance of soft rock hits at a local club gig took off into a weekly residence. Performing primarily covers, the band’s set list is centered around a genre called “yacht rock”, coined by the early 2000s web series of the same name, consisting primarily of soft rock from the 1970s and 1980s, but at times including songs as recent as the early 1990s.
Although the Yacht Rock Revue started as a side project, it is now the main focus for all seven band members: Peter Olson, Nicholas Niespodziani, Mark Cobb, Greg Lee, Mark Bencuya, Mark Dannells, and David Freeman. The band has a contract with Live Nation and tours nationally, playing more than 100 shows a year and selling out theaters in Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.. In order to keep up with demand, a subsidiary band was launched in 2009 called Yacht Rock Schooner.
In 2015, two of the founding band members, Peter Olson and Nicholas Niespodziani, opened Venkman’s, a restaurant and music venue in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. Venkman’s closed in 2022 with tentative plans to reopen in a new location.
What are the three main elements of 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.
What qualifies a song as 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 …
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 …
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 …
📹 What Is ‘Yacht Rock’? Plus 10 Essential Yacht Rock Albums
Join Pete Pardo for a show all about that breezy pop rock music labeled ‘yacht rock’. #yachtrock Donate via Ko-Fi: …
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