In Defense of Yacht Rock

How an obscure comedy web series helped re-popularize the music it made fun of, relaunching the careers of musicians in their sunset

By Jim Miller

Smooth.

That is the operative word when talking about Yacht Rock.

While you may not be familiar with the term “Yacht Rock,” you most certainly have heard songs from the genre. Comprising dozens of Top Ten hits, the category is mostly composed of easygoing music written and recorded in the Los Angeles area from the mid-‘70s through the early ‘80s.

During that time, this music was most likely referred to as AM Gold, Adult-Oriented Rock or Soft Rock. But, by a humorous twist of fate, it would be rebranded decades later as Yacht Rock. Music that, in a word, could be universally defined as “smooth.” Think breezy melodies, jazz chord progressions played on a Fender Rhodes, and slick studio productions. Songs like “What A Fool Believes” by The Doobie Brothers, “Hey Nineteen” by Steely Dan and Toto’s “Africa.”

The prototypical Yacht Rock song incorporates elements of other genres, but it does not clearly belong to any of them. Instead, it drifts luxuriously between the ports of other styles. It’s smooth, but more sophisticated in structure than straight-ahead pop. Usually upbeat, but nowhere nearly as rowdy as hard rock. Soulful, but typically not as emotionally intense as R&B.

At its best, Yacht Rock conjures imagery of a boat party off the coast of Catalina Island during the sunset of the ‘70s. Tunes that, like the Brie at the party’s charcuterie table, are nearly impossible to resist — wonderfully cheesy and possibly addictive.

At its worst, Yacht Rock can get lost in the Bermuda Triangle of elevator music with songs that stray off course into sappy sentimentalism and/or moanfully bad cliches. In that respect, critics of the genre present a point worth noting.

Regardless of good or bad, these attributes make the genre — and most importantly the artists who performed the songs — a perfect target for parody. Which is exactly what happened in 2005, when the comedy series that coined the term “Yacht Rock,” debuted on the internet.

This Is It: Yacht Rock

Launched in 2002 in Los Angeles, Channel 101 began as a monthly short-film festival where audience members voted on their favorite shorts, all of which had to be a length of five minutes or less. After the votes were tabulated, the top-five selections would win “prime-time” spots on the Channel 101 website.

Series that continued to get voted into the top five would earn another month on the website and another chance to submit a new entry the following month. Those falling short of the top-five would be “canceled.”

Three years into the Channel 101 experiment, a short called Yacht Rock cruised into the competition. After sailing off in the first-place position that night, it went on to break all Channel 101 records by continuing to be a top-five finisher for nine consecutive months. Ten episodes were created from 2005 to 2006. At the time, no other series had previously lasted that long. ▶

A hybrid of documentary and music video, the first episode reimagines how a chipper Kenny Loggins and a down-onhis-luck Michael McDonald first meet on the way to becoming Yacht Rock superstars. An interaction with a drunk Jim Messina sees the new duo inspired to write “What A Fool Believes.” The episode ends on a comedic cliffhanging confrontation with Darryl Hall and John Oates, who are portrayed largely like bullies in an Afterschool Special.

If high-production values are a hallmark of the Yacht Rock genre, the opposite could be said of Yacht Rock the web series, with purposefully stale acting, bad costumes, and scenes filmed in back yards and alleyways.

None of that really mattered, though. In fact, it merely added to the charm.

Conceptually, Yacht Rock echoed the humor of MAD Magazine and Airplane! Following episodes would go on to cleverly poke fun at other artists of the era like Christopher Cross, Steely Dan, Toto, the Eagles, Peter Cetera, James Ingram, The Doobie Brothers, Michael Jackson — and even Van Halen, Willie Nelson and Warren G. (in a flash-forward episode).

McDonald is perhaps the artist who gets piled on the most with running jokes of him worrying about being “irrelevant.” Despite the digs, the musician said that he found the show “hilarious,” adding in 2008 that “those things always have a little bit of truth to them.”

As years went by, McDonald and other Yacht Rockers would have the last laugh. After the series landed on YouTube in 2007, it began building a much wider audience. So much so that an eleventh episode was filmed in 2007 and a twelfth in 2010.

Inevitably, the show’s building popularity helped lead a Yacht Rock music resurgence. For some less-known acts, like Ambrosia and Player, it would bring life back to their faded careers. Even bigger acts, like Hall & Oates credit the Yacht Rock phenom for recharging things. “I think Yacht Rock was the beginning of this whole Hall & Oates resurrection,” said John Oates in a 2007 interview.

IN DEFENSE OF...

continued from previous page Released this summer, Yacht Soul shows how much Black music influenced the White artists of the Yacht Rock genre, and vice versa.

Yesterday’s Rock, Today’s Yacht

Today that first episode of Yacht Rock has amassed more than 46,000 views on the Channel 101 website and a whopping 1.2 million views on YouTube with another 280,000 via the channel’s HD version. As Channel 101 creators have written on their site: “Yacht Rock enjoyed success on levels and in ways previously unattained by 101 shows, its title becoming a household phrase at radio stations, a bin at your local record story, and a category on iTunes.”

From the trend has emerged a devoted SiriusXM station, multiple Spotify playlists, popular podcasts, and scores of Yacht Rock cover bands such as Yacht Rock Revue. Starting in a small bar in Atlanta in 2007, Yacht Rock Revue now draws thousands of fans when playing more than 100 shows across the country each year. The band’s annual gala has attracted guest-stars like Bobby Kimball of Toto, Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass, and Robbie Dupree.

“There were four, five years I couldn’t get arrested,” Dupree said of this career after his 1980 hit, “Steal Away,” in a Wall Street Journal interview. But with the rise in Yacht Rock’s popularity, Dupree saw a 2015 tour with similar acts draw thousands of fans — more than he had seen in decades.

Six years later, the ship shows little signs of slowing. Yacht Rock Revue closed out this year’s tour at the end of October and is already

promoting its five February dates in Runaway Bay, Jamaica. In Delaware, this year has also seen the local rise of 3 Hour Tour, a Yacht Rock composed some of the area’s most seasoned musicians.

In June, Rolling Stone published “Yacht Rock: An Album Guide,” which covers the must-haves and deep-dives of the genre.

July saw the release of Yacht Soul, a twoalbum compilation of Yacht Rock favorites covered by soul and R&B artists and features the likes of Aretha Franklin covering “What A Fool Believes,” Chaka Khan doing Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere,” and Quincy Jones on The Doobies’ “Taking It to the Streets.”

The album proves just how much Black music influenced the primarily White artists who originally wrote the material — while underscoring the extent to which many of those musicians were involved in that L.A. music scene during that era.

Jones was certainly a mover and shaker at the time and, in addition to leaning on members of Toto for his recording productions, he also relied heavily on Brothers Johnson and Greg Phillinganes, popular studio musicians who have original recordings on Yacht Soul (written by members of Toto and Steely Dan, respectively).

Not by pure coincidence, Phillinganes plays keyboards on John Mayer’s summer hit, “Last Train Home,” which easily could have been called “Last Yacht Home.” The opening synth lines echo those of Toto’s “Africa”— a band Phillinganes played with from 2003 to 2008.

“Killer new track John,” Toto’s Steve Lukather wrote on Mayer’s Instagram post, when he released the song on June 9. It would peak at #13 on the U.S. Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart.

In an interview with the Blackbird Spyplane newsletter, Mayer explained the ‘80s vibe “Last Train Home” and other songs on his new album Sob Music.

“I think if you’re wise enough and care enough about the thing you’re doing, you can go back to another time and reanimate it… find a way not to reproduce something but continue to produce it from the original loom.”

Smooth.

Yes, that’s the operative word when discussing Yacht Rock music. But in terms of a genre of music, the word is “perennial.”

Many songs and styles go in and out of fashion, again and again, like the tides. In similar fashion, Yacht Rocks’s key elements continue to resurface and be rediscovered — today, 45 years after they first became popular.

Yes, the Yacht sails on…

And, to think: It all started with a few laughs.