The Doobie Brothers
What is yacht rock? In the new HBO movie, Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, no one can agree on a definition.Â
For the comedian Fred Armisen, yacht rock is âa very relaxing feeling.â But for the writer Rob Tannenbaum, yacht rock is a space where singers âcould declare not just your sensitivity but your torment at how sensitive you are, your sense of being ravaged by having feelings.â He calls this âfairly unique to yacht rock,â which would be true if soul music did not exist.Â
How about another, more specific, definition: âOne way to know if youâre listening to yacht rock is [if you hear] the sound of Michael McDonaldâs voice,â according to Alex Pappademas, author of Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors From the Songs of Steely Dan. Then again, David Pack, lead singer of the band Ambrosia, calls McDonaldâs style âprogressive R&B pop,â while Questlove describes yacht rock as âutility more than it is music.â
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
This all begs the question: If yacht rock is such a vague label, what makes it worth using?Â
J.D. Ryznar and Steve Huey helped coin this imprecise term in their 2005 mockumentary series Yacht Rock, long after the music it attempted to brand was out of style. Each episode traced the activities of goofy, fictionalized versions of McDonald, his contemporaries, and his collaborators â Hall & Oates love to dunk on âsmooth music,â while Kenny Logginsâ character says pompous things like, âwhen a friend is drowning in a sea of sadness, you donât just toss them a life vest, you swim one over to them.â
Trending on Billboard
As the yacht rock label caught on, it gave a set of younger listeners a way to explore and maybe embrace â even if ironically â music that had become a kind of cultural shorthand for uncool, the target of mainstream jibes in Family Guy and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. âFor a long time, I thought Steely Dan, man, thatâs just music for dorks and weirdos,â the critic Amanda Petrusich says in A Dockumentary. âYou come to it jokingly,â Pappademas adds, discussing yacht rock. âBut then you suddenly find yourself appreciating it sincerely.âÂ
As yacht rock DJ nights and streaming playlists proliferated, this elevated the artists most closely associated with the style, helping to extend their careers. âI fully expected to be totally forgotten by the end of the 1980s,â McDonald says in A Dockumentary. Instead, the film shows him and Loggins collaborating with the bass virtuoso Thundercat in 2017 and performing at Coachella â one of the worldâs most prominent stages.Â
That said: While the yacht rock label gave some artists a boost, it actually masks the lineage of the music it purports to describe. It serves as camouflage, rather than providing clarity.Â
Most notably, the term obscures the sizable debt that these records owe to contemporaneous Black music. Many of the tracks associated with the style are steeped in the language of 1970s R&B, conversant with Marvin Gayeâs intricate, tortured funk, immaculate Quincy Jones productions, and the airy, wrenching ballads Earth, Wind & Fire and the Isley Brothers scattered like birdseed across the second half of the Seventies.Â
The dialog was facilitated by session musicians who moved easily between worlds. Chuck Rainey played bass with Steely Dan but also appeared on Gayeâs I Want You and Cheryl Lynnâs Cheryl Lynn. Greg Phillinganes handled keyboards for McDonald and Leo Sayer as well as Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. Horn player and arranger Jerry Hey hopped from Boz Scaggs and Michael Franks to Teena Marie and Janet Jackson.Â
A Dockumentary nods to yacht rockâs lineage. âYacht rock is associated with white groups and white songwriters and producers, but I know more Black yacht rock than I do traditional yacht rock,â Questlove says, pointing to Al Jarreau, the Pointer Sistersâ âSlow Hand,â and George Bensonâs âTurn Your Love Around.â That music doesnât get much play in the typical yacht rock conversation, though â or in A Dockumentary.Â
What does it mean that one of the strands of white music that was most in touch with the Black music of the 1970s was reclaimed largely as a joke, even if itâs an affectionate one? Armisen believes that âthereâs nothing greater, in a way, for any genre to be joked about, because it means that itâs relevant.âÂ
This may be a sensible perspective for a comedian. Itâs not surprising, though, that the subjects of the wisecracks donât always feel the same way. âAt first, I felt a little insulted, like we were being made fun of,â says Loggins. âBut I began to see that it was also a kind of ass-backwards way to honor us.âÂ
Unlike Loggins, Steely Danâs Donald Fagen hasnât reached this stage of acceptance. When the documentaryâs director asked him about yacht rock, Fagen cursed at him and hung up the phone, an exchange that was recorded and included in the film. Steely Danâs longtime producer Gary Katz expressed a similar disinterest in the yacht rock label â albeit using less-colorful language â this summer during an interview with the music manager Scott Barkham in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Itâs not unusual for artists to express hostility towards genre terms. In fact, they are constantly saying they donât want to be âpigeonholedâ or âput in a box.â When the critic Kelefa Sanneh published Major Labels, a book-length defense of musical genre, in 2021, he wrote that artists âhate being labeled. And they think more about the rules they break than about the ones they follow.â
There is certainly a case to be made against the whole idea of summing up a large body of art in a word or two. The result is, all too often, genre descriptors that are either all-encompassingly vague or simply inaccurate. Some labels, however, are at least fairly neutral â âpost-punk,â âhouse music.â Some, on the other hand, have negative connotations, if theyâre not downright sneering at the songs they claim to describe: Take âbro countryâ or âPBR&B.âÂ
As A Dockumentary makes clear, âyacht rockâ still reliably elicits chuckles. But even if that humor helped these musicians gain younger followers, it often runs contrary to the tone and themes of their songs. âThe term emerged from what was essentially a comedy show,â which had âa really big impact on the way that the music is now ironically appreciated,â Petrusich points out. However, âthe records that [these artists] were making were entirely sincere.âÂ
Can those records â and the artists behind them â ever be taken seriously if theyâre still being laughed at? Loggins is a surprisingly versatile songwriter with a sinuous delivery and a knack for unpredictable funk. McDonaldâs voice stood out even during a time when commanding voices were ubiquitous; songs like âYou Belong to Meâ and âI Keep Forgettinâ (Every Time Youâre Near)â are essential contributions to the soul canon. But when these acts are lumped into yacht rock, they are relegated to the minor leagues, stuck as purveyors of slick chill-out music for the aging and affluent.
âIâve made peace with âyacht rock,â but for the first few years, I just hated it,â Pack says in A Dockumentary. âIâm like, âWhy did they pick our generation to make all of our music into a big joke?’â
-
Pages