Yacht Rock: Smooth Sailing on Rocky Waters Read about how the soft-rock genre has weathered the test of time, and listen to a playlist of some of the best yacht rock songs, from Christopher Cross and Toto to Steely Dan and Thundercat.
By
Bryan Parys
December 9, 2024
Michael McDonald, one of yacht rocks icons.
Image by Soul Train/Getty/Courtesy HBO
If you remove the bits about sailing in the chorus to Christopher Cross's 1979 hit single . . . um, Sailing . . . this otherwise anthem of smooth becomes somewhat more desperate:
Takes me away to where Ive always heard it could be
Just a dream and the wind to carry me
Soon I will be free
Considered a platonic ideal of the genre now known as yacht rock, Sailing seems to embody the kind of calm escapism that critics of the style have focused on. The perfectionist production quality, lush harmonies, and reliance on lyrical sentimentality have made the song-and many of the entries in the subgenre in general-appear unserious and ripe for parody. In fact, the term is itself a joke, coined in 2005 by an LA-based comedy group led by J. D. Ryznar. The group created a web series called Yacht Rock featuring fictionalized accounts of many of the genres key players.
Yacht Rocks Epic VoyageBut it's far from this simple. Yacht rock has weathered shifts in critical and public opinions in the roughly 45 years since it first emerged, and has been cited as hugely influential to contemporary musicians such as Questlove (of the Roots) and bass wunderkind Thundercat. Touring acts paying homage to the genre have become wildly successful, from the soft-metal group Y chtley Cr w to Yacht Rock Revue, which features Berklee alum Mark Dannells 89 on guitar and vocals.
This history is explored at length in the new HBO documentary Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, directed by Garret Price (Woodstock '99: Peace, Love, and Rage). On the genre's origins, Price explains in Variety, It's rooted in R&B and soul and funk and jazz and Black music, basically, which calls out the paradox of how appropriation and true appreciation combined to create a new expression. Regionality also played an important role in creating the scene, as it all took place in Southern California, within this ecosystem of studios with the session guys, Price says.
Watch the trailer for HBOs Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary:
Smooth, but Make It ComplexThe style in its heyday was often referred to simply as the West Coast sound, which is how it was introduced to Maureen McMullan PD 09, senior concert producer at Berklee and yacht rock aficionado. McMullan was drawn to the music's keen sense of musical and harmonic complexity while still sounding like effortless pop. That complexity is due in large part to the significant influence of R&B and jazz. As McMullan explains, Broadly speaking, while we are more accustomed to hearing triadic chords and the occasional dominant 7th in standard pop tunes, yacht rock introduces jazz-inspired harmonies, including extended tensions (7th, 9ths, #11s, etc.), non-diatonic slash chords, and advanced writing devices such as modal interchange (where chords are borrowed from parallel scales or modes).
A notable example, she says, is the song Peg by Steely Dan, which appears on their masterpiece album Aja. The song places a strong emphasis on technique, precision, and nuance in both the musical performances and production, all while maintaining an unwavering sense of groove, feel, and pocket, McMullan says. For me, this perfect balance between artistry and accessibility is what makes songs in this genre so magnetic and satisfying.
Its worth noting that Steely Dan has always had a somewhat complicated relationship with being pinned down to any one genre, especially after the term yacht rock brought a level of kitsch and parody into the discussion. And yet, the band is spoken about in nearly religious terms for yacht rock fans. When Berklee alum and cofounding band member Donald Fagen 66 01H was asked by Garrett Price to be in the HBO documentary, he had some . . . choice words for the director before promptly hanging up. At the same time, the band licensed a number of Steely Dan songs for inclusion in the film, so perhaps there is at least a quiet, winking acceptance of their place in the nautico-musical canon.
The New Wrecking CrewSteely Dan is just one of the top-tier artists that are considered torch-bearers of yacht rock. Kenny Loggins, the Doobie Brothers, Toto, and the aforementioned Christopher Cross have all cemented their place on Yacht Rushmore. If you look at the personnel involved in making the music for these various artists, you start to notice a lot of the same names-chief among them Michael McDonald, Steve Lukather, David Paich, and the Porcaro brothers, Jeff, Steve, and Mike. And lest there's a temptation to pigeonhole these musicians as rank-and-file yacht-rockers, you need only look at the credits on Michael Jackson's Thriller-the best-selling album of all-time-to see the unimpeachable impact these players have had on music history. In many ways, they were the next generation of the Wrecking Crew-the famous group of studio musician titans who appeared on countless seminal albums in the 60s and early 70s.
Taken by the FantasyThe line that follows the chorus in Cross's Sailing, Fantasy / It gets the best of me, may be the style's perfect slogan for a number of reasons. It plays, of course, on the simple cultural understanding of a fantasy-a happy place that exists only in our imagination, and yet something many people try to get lost in. Take the following YouTube comment on the song: For 4 minutes you could be somewhere else . . . If reality were everything we wanted it to be, we wouldn't be looking to be anywhere else, even if just for a few minutes.
So to push on that idea of
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Yacht Rock: Smooth Sailing on Rocky Waters Read about how the soft-rock genre has weathered the test of time, and listen to a playlist of some of the best yacht rock songs, from Christopher Cross and Toto to Steely Dan and Thundercat.
