In Praise of Yacht Rock

As a child of late-'70s/early-'80s radio saturation, my love of Yacht Rock is deep and true. In fact, that genre label didn't exist at the time, as far as I knew. What I remember is dialing the hi-fi tuner on a lazy summer evening and stumbling across a cascade of celestial light in the form of the sax riff in "Baker Street." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Why were people going on about Mozart and Beethoven when this brilliance was happening in popular music? A lot of my favorites from those years--Steely Dan, Bertie Higgins, Michael MacDonald, Toto--would later get bunched together and labeled Yacht Rock, but to me they were just gorgeous melodies which shimmered.

Listening back on the music now, that quality still stands out, along with unmistakably brilliant musicianship. And sure, today you might be likely to hear one of those numbers when you're staring at the ceiling in the dentist's office, but that should make the experience better, not worse. The New Wave music that followed Yacht Rock seemed to share a lot of that smooth DNA, so artists like Sade and Spandau Ballet and even The Smiths sounded like close relatives even if the mood and messages had changed with the times. I almost want to say that no genre of music deserves derision, since genre itself is a false construct. True, some stuff is truly repugnant--looking at you, Country Rap and Hick Hop--but Yacht Rock will always sound like a magical summer evening to me.