Yacht rock


Yacht rock is a broad music style and aesthetic commonly associated with soft rock, one of the most commercially successful genres from the mid-1970s to early 1980s. Drawing on sources such as smooth soul, smooth jazz, R&B, funk and disco, common stylistic traits include high-quality production, clean vocals, and a focus on light, catchy melodies. Its name, coined in 2005 by the makers of the online video series Yacht Rock, was derived from its association with the popular Southern Californian leisure activity of sailing.

Definition

The term "yacht rock" did not exist contemporaneously with the music the term describes, from about 1975 to 1984. It refers to "adult-oriented rock" 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. 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' anthemic track, "Sailing". 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" as follows:
The "exhilaration of escape" is "essential to yacht", according to journalist and documentary-film maker Katie Puckrik. She quoted the lyrics of Cross' "Ride Like the Wind", "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 the Summer Lawns", which described the "tarnished love" of "a woman trapped in a big house and a loveless marriage".
According to Mara Schwartz Kuge, who worked in the LA music industry for two decades, "Soft rock was a genre of very popular pop music from the '70s and early '80s, characterized by soft, mostly acoustic guitars and slow-to-mid tempos... most people have generalized the term to mean anything kind of soft-and-'70s-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."
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 is accepted as yacht rock, but Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is not.

''Yacht Rock'' creators

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. On their podcasts Beyond Yacht Rock and Yacht or Nyacht?, they have ranked various songs as being either within or outside of the genre.
Factors that the four list as relevant to yacht rock include:
Ryznar and co. 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.

Origins

The socio-political and economic changes that contributed to the emergence of the genre have recently been described by journalists like Steven Orlofsky, and by documentary-film maker Katie Puckrik. Orlofsky said some AC musicians such as Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan and Supertramp were well-respected by critics and listeners. Yacht rock was art "untouched by the outside world." By contrast to what followed, this "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 Jacobins 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". 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 included Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan and Toto.

Resurgence

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.

Legacy

Yacht rock is listed as a genre on Spotify and Pandora. Since 2015, there has been "Yacht Rock" channel on Sirius XM Satellite Radio. However, the channel reverts back to the off-season channel after summer, but is available year round on the Sirius XM app.
Twenty-first century musicians have formed cover bands centered on the yacht rock idea, such as Yacht Rock Revue, which has done national tours. The band hosts an annual Yacht Rock Revival concert where they invite members of the original bands that they cover to join them on stage for a few songs, including Walter Egan, Robbie Dupree, Peter Beckett, Bobby Kimball, Jeff Carlisi, Bill Champlin, and Denny Laine.
Orlofsky has argued that the genre's resurgence is partly due to its function as an antidote to the negativity of the Trump era in the USA. 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."
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 history of the genre. The book featured a foreword by Fred Armisen, and interviews with Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins, and John Oates, among others.

Yacht rock-inspired music

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.
The 2017 album by Thundercat, Drunk, featured a song that included guest vocalists Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald, entitled "Show You the Way".
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 ", which lead singer Mark McGrath has called "the torch bearer of all things yacht rock".