FFAF: Why I Love “Yacht Rock”

Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Are you just trying to get away this weekend? Do you need to go sailing? Do you need to ride like the wind, or is that silly? Is that just something only a fool believes? If you like all of that, then you’ll probably like the genre of music I’m going to be talking about today here on Free-For-All Friday. We need to be free. We have to go out, get out on our yachts and travel and listen to our yacht rock on Free-For-All Friday here on the Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist, Trent Horn.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, we talk apologetics and theology. Friday, we talk about whatever I want to talk about, and today I want to talk about my favorite genre of music that I just recently learned has a unique name to it. I didn’t know it had a name to it before. I called it easy listening, but it’s not narrow enough because easy listening doesn’t fall under it. Like Kenny G for example, (singing) going on with the saxophone. Oh, I like Kenny G, but that’s not my favorite genre of music to listen to. My wife would call it doctor’s office music, and she always rips on me for it. She loves this genre of music, by the way. She does like it, but she makes fun of me for it. I’ll put it on. She says, “Ah, Trent, that sounds like the music they play over the speaker in the doctor’s office when you were a kid waiting to go in.”

You sit there and you’re reading your Highlight magazine. You’re staring at the aquarium with the weird lights, the wood-paneled aquarium in the older doctor’s offices, and they call you in, and they have this kind of easy listening music from the late ’70s, early 80s. Because when I was a kid and went to the doctor’s office. That would’ve been 1989, 1993. So what were they playing then? They were playing this kind of easy listening stuff from the late ’70s and the early ’80s, and I think it just kind of imprinted on me ever since then.

So it’s called yacht rock, also called West Coast sound, which makes sense because I love West Coast stuff. I love this West Coast sound from the ’70s and ’80s, really popular among white people. I’m going to be honest with you, this is white people music. There is no other way around it. But I also like music popular among black people in the early ;90s on the West Coast, Dr. Dre, Easy-E, Ice Cube, NWA, all of that. So maybe I’ll do a whole other Straight Outta Compton episode that we could talk about.

So it’s called yacht rock, and I learned about the term because I was looking for local musical groups to go see a concert here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I just like to go out sometimes listen to live music. So I was looking at different things like, “Okay, do they have any good bands?” And there’s a band called The Windbreakers that’s playing. Actually it’s playing very soon. I’m going to go out to see them. And I was looking them up. I thought, “Okay, I’ll look them up on YouTube and say, “These guys look funny. It’s just a bunch of guys, middle-aged white guys on a boat with their nautical hats and glasses and they’re called The Windbreakers.”

And I listened to a demo video of them and I listen, I realize, “Oh my goodness, all these songs sound the same.” And they’re all the songs that I love, like Christopher Cross. (singing) Ride Like The Wind. Other things like Kenny Loggins, Toto, Africa. So Africa. (singing). Putting all that together, listening to it. What a Fool Believes, Michael McDonald, all of this stuff. And I’m like, “Wait a minute, these guys can do all this.”

It all sounds the same when they do it, because it all belongs to the same genre. It all belongs to the genre of yacht rock. So I’ll play a little clip of it so you get the idea what I’m talking about. I worry about playing the actual songs for copyright reasons, but I think if I play The Windbreakers covering it, I should be okay. I highly doubt anyone’s going to come after me. So I’m going to play a little bit of these guys covering these songs and you’ll see they’re all pretty similar in their structure.

So as I said, that’s the kind of music I really like. Is it cheesy? Yes. Do I love it? Absolutely. So let me talk about the nature of the genre because it’s also called soft rock or California sound. It wasn’t called yacht rock until 2005. So when talking about it here, it says, “The term yacht rock did not exist contemporaneously with the music the term describes.” It’s talking about music from 1975 to about 1984, also called West Coast sound, adult-oriented rock. It became identified with yacht rock in 2005, coined by JD Ryznar in a online video series of the same name. So you can go on YouTube and you can watch this. You just search for yacht rock series. And it is a fictional dramatization of the rise of this medium. It’s a fictionalized dramatization of guys dressed up as like Kenny Loggins, The Doobie Brothers, Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross, and imagines all of them in Southern California interacting with each other and how the music came to be.

And it begins with an intro by the host for each one. So it’s a funny series. And once again, there’s some morally offensive elements, some swearing, things like that in it, but it’s pretty hilarious. They take liberties of some of the history. But it’s funny. And in the mid 2000s, that web series, it’s got over a million views on YouTube, it helped to bring a resurgence of this late ’70, early 80’s music to a new audience. So people like myself is when I would’ve been in college, for example, and listened to this. So let me talk about these kind of lyrics. And the idea is that this is the kind of music if you were a yuppie in 1983 and you were playing it on your yacht and you’re going sailing in the marina at Long Beach or San Diego or something like that, that’s what you would want to hear is this kind of stuff.

And the themes of it are really funny because a lot of themes deal with … It’s a weird music, that it’s happy, sad music. There are those songs, right? Think about Cat’s in the Cradle. It has a happy, upbeat element to it. (singing) And when you listen to the whole song you’re like, wow, this is an absolutely depressing song because it’s about a guy, he doesn’t have time for his kids. And then when he is an adult, his kids don’t have time for him. And it’s like, “No.” (singing) And I love that cheesy stuff. I love it. So it’s happy, sad music. It has an upbeat, happy element, but the lyrics are actually kind of darker and melancholic.

And that’s something similar with yacht rock, that a lot of the themes deal with escape. “I have to get away. I’m a fool. What have I done?” So I imagine these yuppies, they’re out on their boat, away from their wife and kids just for a minute of peace and quiet out on the harbor. And maybe they’re just thinking, “I just want to get away from it all. If I could just take this boat and get down to Mexico, I would be happy.” Relax, buddy. I think you’re okay. Your job probably still has a pension. We don’t even have those anymore in the mid 2020s. And homes cost like what? $120,000 in California. So you’re living just fine if you’re a yuppie in 1983. Okay?

So reading here from what it says here online, what are the key elements of yacht rock? Like you’re thinking, Christopher Cross’ Sailing (singing), from your Michael McDonald. This stuff. Here are the three defining rules of yacht rock.

One, keep it smooth even when it grooves with more emphasis on the melody than on the beat. So that seems right. When you listen to a lot of these songs, very rare to hear drums. It doesn’t have heavy drum beats to it. It’s very smooth. Keep it smooth, even when it’s grooving. It’s more about the melody than the beat. You’re kind of swaying with the melody rather than tapping your feet to the beat.

Number two, keep the emotions light, even when the sentiment turns sad as is so often the case in the world of the sensitive yacht rocksman. It’s a very sensitive man on his yacht trying to sail his way through life. Keep the emotions light even when the sentiment turns sad. And it’s interesting when you listen to the subtext of the lyrics in a lot of these songs, or Take Me Away to Margaritaville. All of these songs. It’s always like some woman. I mean, most songs are about a woman that you’re having problems with. And so you have this sad element, but it’s still light even though the lyrics are kind of melancholic. (Singing) That is not Margaritaville at all.

And the third rule, always keep it catchy no matter how modest or deeply buried in the trackless the tune happens to be. You got to stay catchy when you’re doing it. So it goes on to talk about how things are on the border of yacht rock, which I find interesting. It says, “Not all yacht rock is soft. Some of it has a harder tempo to it.” So you have a Toto, for example, (singing) or Footloose. It says here, “Footloose is yacht rock, not soft rock.” I don’t know. Footloose, I mean, that one, you are just stamping your feet. It’s Footloose. You have to cut loose and dance to that. I feel like maybe if you’re having a dance party on your yacht, you’re going to play footloose. Also says Thriller is here. Nah, come on. I’m going to put Footloose and Thriller. That’s on the fringes of yacht rock. So I’ll go down here and read a little bit more about some of the origins of the music.

It says, “Yacht rock was art untouched by the outside world. By contrast to what followed, this was probably the last major era of pop music wholly separated from the politics of its day. Yacht rock represented an introspective individualism that emerged after the death of the mass movement idealism of the 1960s. Its reassuringly vague escapism was boosted by the rise of FM radio, which brought together two consequences of gender emancipation, women who controlled household spending and men who felt freer to convey their emotions in song. The roots of yacht rock can be traced in the music of the beach Boys whose aesthetic was the first to be scavenged by acts like Rupert Holmes.”

It talks also about Captain & Tennille. So you hear like Love Will Keep Us Together. Of course, that was wasn’t a Captain & Tennille song. They covered that song. Was originally done by … Who did that? Neil Sedaka back in 1973. And then Captain & Tennille covered it later. So it was also credited with bringing back groups like Hall & Oates, the resurgence of yacht rock. I love Hall & Oates. I love any song that has purposeful clapping in it. (singing) Trent, don’t quit your day job and sing. No, I won’t do that. I’ll wrap up you with a few other elements of yacht rock that are commonalities to it.

So another list talks about these common elements of it, that it has a high production value. It was using elite LA-based studio musicians and producers to make the tracks. It has jazz and R&B influences, use of the electric piano. Ah, that sweet and soothing electric piano. An upbeat rhythm called the Doobie Bounce. Of course, The Doobie Brothers are associated a lot with yacht rock. And as I said before, complex and wry lyrics about heartbroken foolish men, particularly involving the word fool. (singing) Oh my goodness. So I don’t know. So that’s it. That’s all I just wanted to talk about today.

It’s always fun for me to explore different genres of music, to see what’s out there. Because you think maybe there’s only, what, 12 genres, rock, classical, country. We play both kinds of music, country and western. But when you start to think about the different genres, it’s like a fractal that goes in an infinite number of directions to group music in. But that’s a little bit more about me. Do you like yacht rock? Maybe you really like it like I do, and you found a kindred spirit and maybe you just absolutely detest it and now you know more about where this thing you detest comes from. So maybe next time I’ll talk about some of the other genres that I really enjoy. But yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed this and yeah, that you have a very blessed weekend.

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