What is Yacht Rock? According to Sirius radio's Yacht Rock channel, it is playing Baker Street about 13 times a day...every day
Sure, that's fine. To quote myself, the very first line of this thread: "Let me preface this by saying you can put whatever floats your boat on your yacht rock playlist—it’s really not that important." That said, when you plug in certain variables, such as a certain set of studio musicians in a certain era performing music written by certain songwriters which is then produced by certain producers, you get a very consistent outcome—it's a distinct sound. There's a lot of smooth music from the '70s, but these criteria create a discrete subset, and that subset has been coined "yacht rock." (Which is why "Sailing" is an oddity; its equation has all the correct variables, but it didn't produce the usual result. The Beyond Yacht Rock podcast guys also talked about Randy Newman's "I Love LA," which, again, features virtually all of the yacht studio musicians, is from the era, and is about L.A., but is definitely not a yacht rock song.) So yacht rock—as it's defined in this thread—does have narrow parameters, but if you want to compile a playlist of nautically themed '70s music and call it yacht rock, hey, go for it. I mean, it's not like there's some yacht rock governing body reviewing playlists and issue fines, you know? It's all for fun. Enjoy.
YES! Thank you so much! Tho has answered a lot of questions and helped me understand that yacht rock is not just power ballads or 70s soft music. There is a lot more to that. It's a very distinct type of sound produced by a select number of studio artists. I got it. Thanks again.
Wow this post was an interesting read. I loved reading everyone's different opinions on this. I think the main thing that that the folks who created those Yacht Rock short films did was shed a light on music that had been discarded many decades ago. Pick and choose which ones you like or don't. For me I have been very interested in West Coast music. Anyone ever go here? West Coast overlaps Yacht Rock which overlaps soft rock. There were many band sin the 70s & 80s internationally creating this style of music and still do to this day. You can also check out a weekly radio show I do that celebrates this music as well.
Yes, I have. It's a great site. I find it concentrates a bit too much on contemporary Scandinavian artist who create a more Adult Contemporary brand of smooth music (which I guess is kind of its point), but it is an absolute treasure trove of obscure yacht rock artists. Definitely worth checking out.
Thanks. Yeah, this really took off in a way I never expected it to, and it's been a really fascinating discussion (for me, at least) along the way. And yes, I agree that while we can argue about the specifics (for a long time, as is evidenced by this thread), the overall point is to resurrect and appreciate a type of music that had largely been dismissed as a bunch of corporate soft rock crap over the years.
Have any of you guys heard of a band called Jakata? A song of theirs was released in 1984 called Golden Girl. Sounds very yachty.
Although I think a lot of the song-picking was done by producer Jay Graydon. He embodies Yacht-i-tude.
It's not. I think a lot of people take the term "yacht rock" very literally and assume that songs with nautical or tropical themes are what the genre is all about. It's usually quite the opposite. The "yacht" in yacht rock refers not so much to actual yachts, but rather to the sophisticated, opulent, "uptown" sound the music has due to it's jazz influence, expert performances, and spotless production—it could have just as easily have been called "champagne rock." And lyrically, the songs are usually far from sunny. A good yacht rock song tends to be somewhat dark or ironic, and the protagonist is usually a lovable loser or a someone suffering the ennui that success or wealth can bring. A great example is Steely Dan's "Hey Nineteen." On the surface, it's a song about an older, presumably wealthy, man enjoying the spoils of his success via a night of partying with a beautiful young lady. But upon closer listen, it's really a lament. He's made it and got the woman every man wants, but he realizes she's just that, an object—it's joyless. "We've got nothing in common. We can't dance. We can't talk at all." The Cuervo Gold and fine Columbian aren't enhancing the night—they're the only thing making it bearable. So he's not celebrating, but rather resigning himself to the fact that if he gets drunk and high enough, he won't care that he's having sex with a women who bores him to tears. So that's what yacht rock is. "The Pina Colada Song," on the other hand, is a perfectly enjoyable bit of '70s pop, but it, and most of Jimmy Buffet's work, are really little more than novelty hits. So if you hear a song about yachts, beaches, coconuts, or tropical drinks, you can pretty much rest assured that it's not yacht rock.
Me as well. I distinctly remember the day I first saw Yacht Rock episode #1 and not only laughing, but simply loving the fact that someone was highlighting a particular set of songs I loved and appreciated. It also took me back to a time in my young life when I didn't care about the identity some music required you to adopt. You just liked the music for what it was. I think this is part of why the whole "yacht rock tribute band" phenomena has such momentum. If you are a fan, you get to create an identity for the shear fun of it. It is also why it has made the broadening of the "genre" so volatile. What one person thinks is "yacht rock" is fighting words for another. Part of why my yacht rock tribute has taken on a life we never dreamed it would take is simply, this is music that was extremely popular, but aside from a couple of early 80's Doobie Brothers tours and Kenny Loggins pre-Danger Zone era, nobody heard this music played live by the artists themselves and very few local cover bands at the time had the chops to play this stuff well. Many of these songs were HUGE hits, but these artists rarely made the jump to the MTV era, rarely or never toured (Christopher Cross, Steely Dan) or were not ready for a more image driven industry. Think about the major "yacht rock" artists and hits -- Doobies....actually broke up and then reformed after Minute by Minute broke and they were not young upstarts...Steely Dan...Gaucho was the epitome of their studio era, did not tour or make public appearances...Christopher Cross...extremely talented, but not the most dynamic of live performers and had no sex appeal...Toto did tour but had serious personal issues once IV broke and could not convincingly make the move into the MTV era. They had to make their mark behind more gifted visual artists (Michael Jackson, Olivia Newton John and others). By the time MTV had its claws in the industry, all the major west coast/AOR/"yacht rock" artists were no longer relevant. So we had this brief moment in time where the music was melodically, rhythmically and occasionally lyrically sophisticated, the artists were mature and well seasoned, the industry was in a bit of a "what's next?" phase, visuals were not very important and the public was receptive to it all. Once MTV hit and the pop music demographics shifted back to a younger audience, it was over, but no one ever thought or had the courage to be nostalgic about it until Rynar's web series. Once they did, it hit a nerve.
The deeper I dig into this genre, the more artists I find and I have discovered there is out there a vast roster of musicians who made their mark into this brand of smooth music. I've found some singers not previously mentioned in this thread: Finis Henderson Shaun Cassidy David Sanborn Michael Sembello Wilson Brothers Rick Matthews Bob James (with David Sanborn) Jakob Magnusson And many many more... Any opinions on this list or considerations as yacht artists? By the way, I think Pages tops the list of yacht rockers- their score "Fearless" is awesome!
I agree, and this only proves the fact that then and again good things in life are not everlasting - and music and art are no exceptions. If they would last long, then they wouldn't be regarded as good quality - because there would be no posthumous work of inferior production to compare it with. The mid 80's saw the yacht's sailing journey come to an end.
I've seen the Wilson Bros. come up on lists of "must-have" West Coast/Yacht Rock artists/albums. I don't think I had heard any of their material, though, until I recently picked up this cool Japanese-made CD that compiles some of Steve Lukather's highlights as a session guitarist ("Session Works"; see below). One of the songs on that CD is the Wilson Bros.' "Take Me To Your Heaven." It's definitely a really nice West Coast tune and probably fits under the Yacht Rock umbrella, too. And it turns out that I already had the Wilson Bros' 1979 album "Another Night" on vinyl but just had never gotten around to listening to it. I'll have to check it out in full. I see on the back sleeve that it was produced by Kyle Lehning, who produced England Dan and John Ford Coley during that same era. Beyond Lukather, though, the session musicians listed on the back are largely not the names I typically see on West Coast albums from that era. That doesn't mean that it couldn't be a nice slice of West Coast/Yacht, though.
So I'm somewhat embarrassed to ask this question considering I've posted several times in the course of this thread, but the term "West Coast/AOR" that gets thrown around so much for this kind of music -- is there a definitive answer on what the "AOR" stands for? I feel like I've seen "adult-oriented rock" listed in some places online and "album-oriented rock" in others. I know that both of those are terms used in the radio business, but I'm not sure I've seen a clear-cut answer on this anywhere.
I think it means everything that is West Coast but not Yacht Rock as well, like the Eagles, Jackson Brown, Linda Ronstadt, and Seals and Crofts. I'm just guessing, though. I might be wrong.
Back in the mid-late 70s, many "rock" stations would play several cuts from a new release LP (as opposed to the record company's suggested singles). Hence, "Album Oriented Rock". Those substituting the word "adult" for "album" are likely conflating the other (rather meaningless) term, "Adult Contemporary", which in my experience, was "Soft Rock". That "soft rock" genre seems to have morphed into this "yacht" thing over the last several years. I get that "Yacht Rock" is mostly a pejorative term, and I think it's that way by design. It's a way for today's 40 somethings to denigrate the previous generation's music. There have been gigabytes of keystrokes deposited in this very forum defending the legitimacy of the "art" of 70s corporate rock. I freely admit I played Hotel California to death in the 70s and was so happy to acquire the DCC CD in the 90s (just one example). But I've come to believe there is truth in the opinion that art history will not be kind to much of the latter-half of the 70s record company output. The blandness of that music is what (IMHO) made punk and disco possible.
You're getting into " hi-tech west coast sound" around 1985 or so. Albums like David Pack-Anywhere You Go. I wonder if all the LA studio musicians went towards the synthesizer and drum machine heavy sound around that time.