Yacht rock

{{See also|Soft rock}}

The term yacht rock did not exist contemporaneously with the music the term describes, which was produced from 1975 to 1984. It refers to "adult-oriented rock" or the "West Coast Sound", which became identified with yacht rock in 2005, when the term was coined in J. D. Ryznar et al.'s online video series of the same name.{{cite news|url=http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/finally-a-name-for-that-music-yacht-rock/|title=Finally, a name for that music: "Yacht Rock"|last=Crumsho|first=Michael|date=January 9, 2006|work=The Seattle Times|access-date=July 29, 2008}}{{cite magazine|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/sail-away-the-oral-history-of-yacht-rock-20150626|title=Sail Away: The Oral History of 'Yacht Rock'|last1=Toal|first1=Drew|date=June 26, 2015|magazine=Rolling Stone|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150629133227/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/sail-away-the-oral-history-of-yacht-rock-20150626|archive-date=June 29, 2015}}Ryznar's webs series "followed fictionalized versions of the stars" and "gently poked fun at the crooners", according to Orlofsky. Understood as a pejorative term, yacht rock referred, in part, to a stereotypical yuppie yacht owner enjoying smooth music while sailing. Many "yacht rockers" included nautical references in their lyrics, videos, and album artwork, exemplified by Christopher Cross's anthemic track, "Sailing" (1979). Long mocked for "its saccharine sincerity and garish fashion," the original stigma attached to the music has lessened since about 2015.

In 2014, AllMusic's Matt Colier identified the "key defining rules of the genre:"

• "keep it smooth, even when it grooves, with more emphasis on the melody than on the beat"
• "keep the emotions light, even when the sentiment turns sad (as is so often the case in the world of the sensitive yacht-rocksman)"
• "always keep it catchy, no matter how modest or deeply buried in the tracklist the tune happens to be"

The "exhilaration of escape" is "essential to yacht," according to journalist and documentary filmmaker Katie 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 in Joni 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".{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/11/i-can-go-for-that-five-essential-yacht-rock-classics|title=I can go for that: five essential yacht rock classics|last=Puckrik|first=Katie|date=June 11, 2019|work=The Guardian|access-date=June 16, 2019|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}}

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 like Rupert 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."{{cite news|last1=Lecaro|first1=Lina|title=This Monthly Club Is a Non-Ironic Celebration of Rock's Softer Side|url=http://www.laweekly.com/music/this-monthly-club-is-a-non-ironic-celebration-of-rocks-softer-side-7624074|work=LA Weekly|date=November 19, 2016}}

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's Thriller (1982) is accepted as yacht rock, but Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (1977) is not.

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.[http://www.yachtrock.com/podcast/2016/6/7/nyacht-rock Nyacht Rock] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180703051341/http://www.yachtrock.com/podcast/2016/6/7/nyacht-rock |date=July 3, 2018 }}. Beyond Yacht Rock, March 18, 2016. On their podcasts Beyond Yacht Rock and Yacht or Nyacht?, they have categorized various songs as being either within or outside of the genre.{{cite web |title=What Even Is Yacht Rock Anyway? |url=https://blog.discogs.com/en/what-even-is-yacht-rock-anyway/ |work=Discogs blog |author=NeahkahnieGold |date=September 11, 2018}}

Factors that the four list as relevant to yacht rock include:

• High production value
• Use of "elite"{{cite web|url=http://www.seattleweekly.com/music/0549/051207_music_talktalk.php|title=Talk Talk: J.D. Ryznar|last=Matos|first=Michaelangelo|date=December 7, 2005|work=Seattle Weekly|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060414071243/http://www.seattleweekly.com/music/0549/051207_music_talktalk.php|archive-date=April 14, 2006|url-status=dead|access-date=October 9, 2006}} Los Angeles–based studio musicians and producers associated with yacht rock
• Jazz and R&B influences
• Use of electric piano
• Complex and wry lyrics about heartbroken, foolish men, particularly involving the word "fool"
• An upbeat rhythm called the "Doobie Bounce"

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, fall outside the scope of the term as originally conceived. 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 as Rupert Holmes and Hall & Oates. The term's inventors consider Michael McDonald the most influential yacht rock artist.{{Cite web |date=2010-04-24 |title=LAist Interview: "Yacht Rock" Creator J.D. Ryznar |url=https://laist.com/news/laist-interview-yacht-rock-creator |access-date=2024-09-26 |website=LAist |language=en}}

The socio-political and economic changes that contributed to the emergence of the genre{{Cite web|url=https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/624635/yacht-rock-music-resurgence|title=If the Yacht Is a Rockin': Riding the Yacht Rock Nostalgia Wave|date=June 12, 2020|website=Mental Floss}} have recently been described by journalists like Steven Orlofsky, and by documentary-film maker Katie Puckrik. Orlofsky pointed out that some contemporaneous pop groups such as Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, and Supertramp were well-respected by critics and listeners.{{Cite web|url=https://theweek.com/articles/847297/defense-yacht-rock|title=In defense of yacht rock|date=June 15, 2019|website=theweek.com}} 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". 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 of FM 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".

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 a 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.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG9OwcH3_sE Neil Sedaka's mini-concert, September 1, 2020] from Sedaka's official YouTube account 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, from Christopher Cross to Eric Carmen, from 'Buffalo Springfield' folksters like Jim Messina to 'Philly Sound' rockers like Hall & Oates".{{cite web|last1=O'Sullivan|first1=Dan|title="California Über Alles": The Empire Yachts Back|url=https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/09/the-yacht-rock-counterrevolution/|work=Jacobin|date=September 4, 2012}}

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, and Toto.{{cite web|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-you-sail-to-it-then-it-must-be-yacht-rock-1444608982|work=The Wall Street Journal|title=Can You Sail to It? Then It Must Be 'Yacht Rock'|author=Kamp, Jon|date=October 11, 2015|url-access=subscription}}{{Cite web|url=http://abcnewsradioonline.com/music-news/2019/7/15/now-thats-what-i-call-yacht-rock-compilation-is-sailing-into.html|title="NOW That's What I Call Yacht Rock" compilation is sailing into record stores next month |website=ABC News Radio|access-date=August 27, 2019|archive-date=August 27, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190827221404/http://abcnewsradioonline.com/music-news/2019/7/15/now-thats-what-i-call-yacht-rock-compilation-is-sailing-into.html|url-status=dead}}{{Cite web |url=http://abcnewsradioonline.com/music-news/2020/4/14/now-thats-what-i-call-yacht-rock-2-compilation-cruising-your.html |title='NOW That's What I Call Yacht Rock 2' compilation cruising your way in May – Music News – ABC News Radio |access-date=July 26, 2020 |archive-date=November 26, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221126030345/http://abcnewsradioonline.com/music-news/2020/4/14/now-thats-what-i-call-yacht-rock-2-compilation-cruising-your.html |url-status=dead }}

Around 2016, positive reappraisals of the genre began to appear in The Guardian,{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/20/yacht-rock-doobie-brothers-hall-and-oates-rupert-holmes|title=Cruise control: how yacht rock sailed back into fashion|last=Bickerdike|first=Jennifer Otter|date=April 20, 2016|work=The Guardian|access-date=June 16, 2019|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}} The Week,{{Cite web|url=https://theweek.com/articles/847297/defense-yacht-rock|title=In defense of yacht rock|last=Orlofsky|first=Steven|date=June 15, 2019|website=theweek.com|access-date=June 16, 2019}} 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.{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/14/i-can-go-for-that-the-smooth-world-of-yacht-rock-review-katie-puckrik-bbc-four|title=I Can Go for That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock review – lushly comforting|last=Seale|first=Jack|date=June 14, 2019|work=The Guardian|access-date=June 16, 2019|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000627v|title=BBC Four – I Can Go For That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock|website=BBC|language=en-GB|access-date=June 16, 2019}} (That documentary is a play on the 1981 Hall & Oates song "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)".)

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 ignore Watergate and Vietnam," it now again represents "a defiant, fingers-planted-firmly-within-ears disregard of any and all political unrest".

New yacht rock bands have formed to cater to fans. Among the bands are Young Gun Silver Fox from London,{{Cite web |author=|date=2018-08-30 |title=Young Gun Silver Fox Create Best Yacht Rock Album Of Last 35 Years With 'AM Waves' (INTERVIEW) |url=https://glidemagazine.com/212161/young-gun-silver-fox-create-best-yacht-rock-album-of-last-35-years-with-am-waves-interview/ |access-date=2022-12-14 |website=Glide Magazine |language=en-US}} Yacht Rock Revue from Atlanta,{{Cite web |last=Gottlieb |first=Jed |date=2024-09-15 |title=Yacht Rock Revue charts course for new music |url=https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/09/15/yacht-rock-revue-charts-course-for-new-music/?utm_source=shopmy |access-date=2024-12-05 |website=Boston Herald |language=en-US}} and Yachtley Crew from Los Angeles.{{Cite web |last=Peterson |first=Karla |date=September 3, 2021 |title=Your endless summer is brought to you by Yacht Rock and Yachtley Crew |url=https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2021/09/03/your-endless-summer-is-brought-to-you-by-yacht-rock-and-yachtley-crew/ |access-date=August 30, 2024 |website=The San Diego Union Tribune}}

A 2012 Jacobin article described yacht rock as "endlessly banal, melodic and inoffensive, fit to be piped into Macy's changing rooms".{{Cite web |title=The Yacht Rock Counterrevolution |url=https://jacobin.com/2012/09/the-yacht-rock-counterrevolution/ |access-date=2022-10-11 |website=jacobin.com |language=en-US}} The article describes the popularity of yacht rock as reflective of a regressive Reagan-era American society and "about the garden of nightmares America had become". According to the Jacobin article, yacht rock served as "an escape from blunt truths" about sociopolitical issues of the day. In an article in The New Inquiry, music scholar J. Temperance stated that yacht rock "sterilized the form of its soul and blues elements and instead emphasized disinterested, intentionally trite lyrical themes".{{Cite web |last=Temperance |first=J. |date=2012-09-05 |title=The Birth of the Uncool: Yacht Rock and Libidinal Subversion |url=https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/the-birth-of-the-uncool-yacht-rock-and-libidinal-subversion/ |access-date=2022-10-11 |website=The New Inquiry |language=en-US}} 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".{{Cite web |last=Sexton |first=Paul |date=2022-09-17 |title=Yacht Rock: A Boatload Of Not-So-Guilty Pleasures |url=https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/yacht-rock-history/ |access-date=2022-10-11 |website=uDiscover Music |language=en-US}} According to writer Max McKenna in a 2018 Popmatters article, the lack of political messaging in the yacht rock genre is a "conservative gesture(s) flying under the radar in a climate of poptimist reappraisal".{{Cite web |date=2018-08-13 |title=Reactionary Rockism: The Dangerous Obsession with "Authenticity" in Indie Rock, PopMatters |url=https://www.popmatters.com/reactionary-rockism-2595467402.html |access-date=2022-10-11 |website=PopMatters |language=en-US}}

In response to the Jacobin article, music scholar J. Temperance wrote in The 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 to progressive rock as well as to punk, postpunk and even proto-postpunk, spurring drastic retrenchments". 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. The New 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".

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 2018 Popmatters article. Wesley Morris compares in a New York Times op-ed piece the recognition given to black artists and white artists who possess the "absurd" quality of blackness in their music.{{Cite news |last=Morris |first=Wesley |date=2019-08-14 |title=Why Is Everyone Always Stealing Black Music? |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/music-black-culture-appropriation.html,%20https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/music-black-culture-appropriation.html |access-date=2022-10-11 |issn=0362-4331}} 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. The Jacobin article described Michael McDonald, a musician well known within the genre of yacht rock, as a "bleached, blue-eyed soul cracker".

Yacht rock is listed as a genre on Spotify, Amazon Music, AccuRadio, and Pandora. Since 2015, there has been a "Yacht Rock" channel on Sirius XM Satellite Radio. The channel reverts to the off-season channel after summer,{{cite web |title=How Yacht Rock Ended Up on Sirius XM |url=https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/10/12/how-yacht-rock-ended-up-on-sirius-xm/ |work=Wall Street Journal Speakeasy blog |date=October 12, 2015}} 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.{{cite web|url=https://www.iheart.com/live/yacht-rock-radio-8681/|title=Yacht Rock Radio |publisher=iHeartRadio|access-date=September 21, 2021}}

In 2018, Jawbone Press released The 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.{{Cite web|url=https://www.thecurrent.org/feature/2018/03/08/yacht-rock-book|title=Rock and Roll Book Club: 'The Yacht Rock Book'|website=www.thecurrent.org}} The book featured a foreword by Fred Armisen, and interviews with Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins, and John Oates, among others.Greg Prato, The Yacht Rock Book: The Oral History of the Soft, Smooth Sounds of the 70s and 80s. Jawbone Press, 2018.

In 2024, HBO Max released Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, directed by Garrett Price. While many TV critics liked the documentary,{{cite web|url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/music_box/s02.2|title=Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary – Music Box |work=rottentomatoes.com|access-date=January 16, 2025}} they argue that after watching it they still don't understand what yacht rock exactly is. 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.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEYUw2kiRfc "Yacht Rock" Is Bullsh*t] December 26, 2024. From Beato's official YouTube account

{{Unreferenced section|date=February 2025}}

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.

New acts such as Vampire Weekend, Foxygen, and Carly Rae Jepsen have adopted elements of yacht rock, while the vaporwave genre of electronic music, which began in the 2010s, appropriated the "nautical iconography" of yacht rock.

The 2017 album by Thundercat, Drunk, featured a song including guest vocalists Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald, entitled "Show You the Way" (all performed the song together on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the same year).

The band Sugar Ray's 2019 album Little Yachty is a conscious homage to yacht rock; it includes a cover of the 1979 Rupert Holmes song "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)", which lead singer Mark McGrath has called "the torchbearer of all things yacht rock".

• List of yacht rock artists
• Culture of California

{{reflist}}

• [http://yachtornyacht.com Yacht or Nyacht] – list of songs as evaluated by the creators of the Yacht Rock web series for applicability to the genre

{{rock music}}

Category:Soft rock

Category:2005 neologisms

Category:1970s in music

Category:1980s in music

Category:20th-century music genres

Category:Rock music genres