That original, informal “list” – defined by the mockumentary series, and by the artists which were on the first yacht rock “format” playlists, is pretty small, as I noted. Those groups are what I referred to as the “inner circle” of yacht rock: they were categorized as such pretty much from when the concept got defined (yes, post-hoc), and (Steely Dan as a notable exception) there’s not much debate as to whether they belong in there.
I agree with you that, as that “genre”/format has grown more mainstream (as far as being a known thing), additional songs by other artists, which fit the style, have been added into it – if, for no other reason than to make it a viable longer-term format – but not many (if any) other artists beyond the original list have wholesale been re-defined as yacht rock.
If it will help anyone to define what Yacht Rock is for themselves, my personal criteria include
When it was released - The qualifying songs are 98% from the 70s
Can you dance to it? If yes, that’s not YR
It’s smooth, and not rocking or edgy or guitar driven
It’s not about a singer or band’s usual style, and it doesn’t matter who wrote it. I don’t associate it with a particular format / playlist. It’s just a very small sector of Easy Listening.
To me, “Easy Listening” is a very different (and probably close to extinct at this point) format – it’s what my parents listened to when I was growing up in the '70s. The “easy listening” station featured a lot of Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Mantovani, Percy Faith, Henry Mancini, etc., and there was nothing rock about it.
I’d say that Yacht Rock is a subsector of Soft Rock or Light Rock.
Mention of Carly Simon and Rita Coolidge got me thinking of what other female singers did James Bond themes in that era. Would For Your Eyes Only be yacht rock, or at least yacht rock adjacent?
Not in my opinion, at least. The rhythm is much too slow, and the feel isn’t “upbeat” enough. It’s a romantic pop ballad, even if it’s highly produced and synth-y.
FYEO is a genre that I haven’t even got a good name for, for my own use, or to talk about and identify it, but I call it “80s movie soundtrack.” It has a sound that, once you notice it, is distinctive. Is it “overproduced”, is the the emphasis on horns, I’m not sure.
I agree. Christopher Cross is always mentioned in these threads as one of the most fitting examples for yacht rock, and his biggest hit “Ride Like The Wind” sounds very danceable.
Unless you have a very wide definition of yacht rock, which makes it just essentially “any soft rock from the late 1970s and early 1980s,” I don’t see “Slow Dancin’” being a fit. It’s too slow, and it doesn’t have the upbeat feel that the prototypical yacht-rock songs do. It’s a nice song, but it’s a slow-dance ballad. YMMV, of course.
US radio stations dedicated to playing album tracks by rock artists from the hard rock and progressive rock genres initially established album-oriented radio. In the mid-1970s, AOR was characterized by a layered, mellifluous sound and sophisticated production with considerable dependence on melodic hooks. The AOR format achieved tremendous popularity in the late 1960s to the early 1980s through research and formal programming to create an album rock format with great commercial appeal.
The list appears to be the result of four people ranking each song on its relative “yachtiness,” and the resulting average score being used to create the rankings. I’m not sure how “definitive” that is.
(Also, a number of their “most yacht” songs are ones which barely charted, if at all, from minor artists. Doesn’t mean they aren’t yachty songs, but they’re reaching to create a big list, IMO.)
I presume that JD, Hunter, Steve, and Dave are four people who gave their opinion on whether the song is Yacht Rock. I presume that 100 means that they think that it definitely is and 0 means that it definitely isn’t. Numbers between 0 and 100 means that that person thinks that it’s somewhere between definitely yes and definitely no, I presume.
That’s how I read it; it also looks like the ratings were given by them in a podcast, also entitled “Yacht or Nyacht” (that’s what the last column on the table refers to).
It’s a list of Yacht Rock songs, not artists. If you are going to define an artist as in the Yacht Rock genre if they have one song in the filtered Yacht Rock category (which seems to be defined as any song that got a single Yachstki vote above 60), then Prince, The Allman Brothers, and Aretha Franklin are in the Yacht Rock genre.
How many female artists are in the Yacht Rock list of songs? About 5%? The first female artist in the Essential list is at number 30. I think that the OP’s title is not much of an exaggeration.
Who the hell is Brenda Russell? (I’ve never heard of her, but it seems like I must have heard her songs during some shopping trip or restaurant visit)
She’s an R&B singer/songwriter. She had two top-40 hits in the U.S. (“So Good, So Right” in '79, “Piano in the Dark” in ‘81), neither of which are the one on those guys’ list. Her biggest claim to fame is that she won a Grammy in 2006, for co-writing the music for the musical adaptation of The Color Purple,
