The term Yacht Rock confused me at first, because I couldn’t work out whether it was ‘cool’ to like it or not (not that I’ve ever cared about being cool when it comes to music – I unironically love Chicago). Nonetheless, it feels very ‘taking the piss out of 80s yuppies,’ the sort of music you’d say you like and be met with eye rolls for being a bit pretentious (Steely Dan). Music snob takes aside, let’s examine the evidence.
The Doobie Brothers. Classic Yacht Rock staple. The potatoes of Yacht Rock. There are the obvious ones – What a Fool Believes, aka the One That Everyone Knows, Long Train Runnin’ and Listen to the Music. Then you’ve got the lesser-known ones like Little Darlin‘ and Echoes of Love, both off my personal favourite Doobies album, Livin’ on the Faultline. At the other end of the scale, there’s Black Water, which combines deep southern imagery with a bluesy, gothic country twang.
Steely Dan are the aforementioned music snob entry for the genre. Don’t get me wrong, I love Steely Dan but it’s absolutely music for musos. In the great Yacht Rock potluck, they’re the vinaigrette – composed of posh ingredients, adds pizzazz. I don’t mean that as an insult, much of Steely Dan’s music is where my favourite, favourite drummer – Jeff Porcaro – did some of his best work, but take Kid Charlemagne, for example. I’m not sure the mainstream charts at the time were clogged with similar songs about the 1960s San Francisco LSD scene, but there you go. Much of my time spent listening to Steely Dan is taken up by thinking ‘how the hell did they get there?’ The answer is Donald Fagen and his famously exacting nature, but even his solo work on The Nightfly follows similarly esoteric patterns – New Frontier is set under the assumption of nuclear war during the 1960s. Obviously the music is brilliant, but for me, the thematic elements are of primary interest in the case of Steely Dan. Apart from the solo in Peg, which I’ve heard my brother play so much that I now have a mild allergy to it (sprouts).
Love Hall and Oates. Kiss On My List, Private Eyes, August Day. Out of Touch – no notes. Don’t have much more to say on these two, the songwriting, harmonies and production are all great. Classic of the genre. Very much the assorted seasonal vegetables.
We have yet to mention the Godfather himself, Mr Michael McDonald – head chef of Yacht Rock. Present on records by the Doobies (lead vocals on What a Fool Believes), Steely Dan & Toto (backing vocals on I’ll Be Over You), pretty much all at the same time, the guy basically owned the genre in the late 70s & early 80s. He also put out some solo work in between these other projects (I Gotta Try, I Keep Forgetting, etc) because apparently he couldn’t take a day off. Look up the video of his character on Family Guy sneezing.
And then we come to the miscellaneous paragraph. The individual Yacht Rock chipolatas which have woven their way into the genre and onto playlists, standing alone next to the entire discography of Boz Scaggs. Such gems include You Can Do Magic by America – I love this song, it gives off a similar lyrical tone to the Eagles’ Witchy Woman, all very sugar and spice, etc. I’d Really Love to See You Tonight by England Dan and John Ford Coley is a favourite – it’s not a huge, dramatic love ballad, it’s a bit of a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin kind of song, but I find that this gives it a gentler sense of intimacy. The last of the miscellaneous section is Dance With Me by Orleans. Again, it’s not complex, nor is it overly emotional, it’s just really sweet.
Yacht Rock was where men were outwardly expressing more nuanced, softer emotions. There’s vulnerability in it, but the vulnerability happens to have some great harmonies behind it and you can’t help but get all misty eyed over Michael McDonald’s owl-like crooning. Yacht Rock full of great music, and it seems that its slightly clichéd reputation has come back round, especially with the gathering momentum of modern Yacht extravaganza Young Gun Silver Fox, about whom I’ll have to write a separate post because I love them so much. However, with the term gradually entering pop culture more and more, it seems that Yacht is cool again – if it was ever meant to be cool in the first place.