6 minute read
You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat
Last year, in the later summer days of my tenure in quarantine, I took up a new, spectacular hobby. I would hop in the car, follow the couple twists and turns of road that made up the grand voyage to the grocery store five minutes from my house. Once there, I was never looking for anything in particular; it was more to be around someone and something, to be lonely in public instead of in private, and to pretend like buying an obscure four dollar seltzer might cure some deep sadness within me.
But the most consuming part of grocery shopping to me, even before my mid-pandemic trips, is the blankly echoing music over the loudspeaker. Grocery store playlists are decidedly neutral, meant to appease and anesthetize customers. Therefore, the choice retail experience is often scored by the gentle, innocuous trappings of the
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storied genre of yacht rock. In the extending hollow of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way,” or even that staple handful of Hall and Oates songs filling up the post-apocalyptic store aisles, I felt the exact form of anonymity and strange comfort I was looking for in the crowds of shoppers battling over gallons of milk and rolls of toilet paper.
For those unaquantited, yacht rock and its lush aesthetics rose to peak popularity during the late 1970s to 1980s. Its sound is largely characterized by a definitive smoothness: sun-soaked melodies were paired with slick production, its sensibilities gentle and glossy, schmaltzy yet sincere. This particular groove was achieved by inflecting the Southern California rock of the time with soul and R&B tendencies, combining playful, funky guitar lines with drawn out sax solos. Yacht rock’s greater values were placed in maintaining a catchy and carefree quality; melody was valued above all else, which ensured a lightness and luxurity was found in every track. Visually, the niche took inspiration from, well, yachts, borrowing imagery of tacky captain’s hats, melted strawberry daiquiris, and long, lounging summers out on the sea. During its heyday, acts such as The Doobie Brothers, Toto, and Kenny Loggins enjoyed chart success as the soundtracks to days spent beholding the sunset on the marina, or maybe just as the soundtrack to the dream of doing so.
Yacht rock was also decidedly uncool, maligned as lame “dad rock” for its cheesy candor and populist position against the countercultural punk and DIY movements of the time. And because of that heavily cemented reputation, it’s more peculiar, or arguably more plausible, that yacht rock has found a renewed relevance as of late. For one, this trend is apparent in the fashionability of its source material. Urban Outfitters, purveyor of most things popular, sells yacht rock’s choice fashion garment, hawaiian shirts, alongside Jefferson Airplane and Hall and Oates graphic tees. Yacht rock icons Steely Dan have been enjoying a post-ironic revival in many internet communities recently. Avant pop singer Kelsey Lu’s cover of yacht rock-ish band 10cc’s hit “I’m Not In Love” has over thirteen million plays on Spotify. This newfound admiration for yacht rock can even be seen in the growing cultural interest in the genre of citypop, its Japanese equivalent. Citypop, like yacht rock, was derided culturally, but boutique labels are now releasing reissues and compilations of seminal works within the genre, and Miki Matsubura’s 1980 citypop hit “Stay With Me” has found novel virality on TikTok of all places.
Yet, it’s not just the native content of the genre that has taken on new relevance: the influence and stylistic flourishes of yacht rock can also be seen in a large handful of modern music. Artists like Carly Rae Jepsen, HAIM, and TOPS are all presently adopting the instrumental markings of yacht rock into their music with jazzy melodies, soft sonic landscapes, and the occassional sax line. Men I Trust and Tame Impala represent two sides of the same coin of what one could consider “modern yacht rock,” using yacht rock’s thesis of smoothness as part of their own too. Mac Demarco’s popular “Chamber of Reflections” features a schmaltzy synthline and (the now cancelled) Ariel Pink’s song “Baby” sounds straight out of the yacht rock era with its vaguely amusing sincerity. Moreover, Lana Del Rey’s charting cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time” shifted the track’s original ska style to something a bit more aligned with yacht rock, imbuing it with a dark glossiness and breezy warmth. Del Rey even uses yacht rock aesthetics in the imagery of her 2019 record Norman Fucking Rockwell!; on its cover, Del Rey is out sailing, and her companion is dressed in white slacks, a popular piece of attire among boaters and yacht rockers alike. Similarly, Vampire Weekend, probably the foremost bearers of attempting to make the uncool cool, notably used yacht rock aesthetics as part of their visual brand, much to the irritation of their detractors; they often wore boat shoes, preppy knits, and khakis, even featuring a boat on the cover of their first ever release (the single “Ladies of Cambridge”). And indie band
Tennis, who started making their sunny and soft 70s inspired rock after an eight-month sailing expedition together, and then went on another as inspiration for their most recent album Swimmer, have made their penchant for the nautical a central part of their brand. But the modern artist most evidently influenced by yacht rock is certainly Thundercat, whose music can most definitely and definitively be described as smooth, always featuring a bright bounce and a luxuriant sensibility. Thundercat even went so far as to release a song, 2017’s “Show You The Way,” featuring Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins, two of yacht rock’s most iconic figures.
So, why is the once scorned genre of yacht rock suddenly so hip? One possibility is the classic “everything old is new again” phenomenon, or maybe more accurately, that everything uncool becomes cool again with enough generational turnover. That may be true, but probably the most obvious answer to yacht rock’s revival lies in its essential premise: escapism. Yacht rock has always been popular because of its insularity; the genre essentially avoided the Reagan era politics of its day, acting instead as a respite from such realities, and is oft-sighted as what was plausibly the last major pop movement to be completely disconnected from such public affairs. Given that the pop music of today isn’t nearly as escapist as it ought to be for an ongoing global pandemic and recession, there is a great, gaping hole in the culture for music that leaves the cares of reality behind. So, enter yacht rock, a carefree, even trivial slice of paradise that properly pacifies the weight of the world.
Whether or not it’s accurate that yacht rock’s new broader relevance can be ascribed to this unfortunate societal climate, I can say that it resonates personally for that exact reason. I do not own a yacht, nor do I plan to, but yacht rock demands nothing of me but pretending I’m on one. Whether I’m wandering the grocery store, lounging on my porch, or in any of the few places the pandemic still allows me to be, there’s something weirdly therapeutic about yacht rock’s gaud and gleam. If anything is true these days, it’s that sometimes, the world demands a beer and a boat.
• Willa Shiomos (Computer Science and Design)
