They introduced it as a limited-time channel a few years ago, and apparently it got enough listenership that they made it full-time. (Though, I think that it’s only part of the lineup on their actual satellite radio channels during the summertime; it’s available year-round on streaming.)
Their closest channel, content-wise, is probably “The Bridge,” which is '70s singer-songwriter “mellow” rock (lots of James Taylor, Carole King, Cat Stevens, and yes, Jackson Browne), though there isn’t a great deal of overlap on particular songs.
They have a number of other channels which also play various iterations of '70s and/or '80s music, though their focus is either on other genres (new wave, disco, R&B, etc.), or just a broad mix of pop and rock music from that era.
Yeah, if there half a dozen similar channels to what is 311 Yacht Rock, I wish you would let me know. I’m finding that 311 is too repetitive to be interesting.
Sure. The song would fit invisibly into a smooth rock format.
“Mary’s Prayer” I’m gobsmacked by. Not Steely Dan, not even yacht rock. Second rate balladeering.
“The Ballad of Jenny Ledge” by Toy Matinee does remind me of the Dan. What does that mean? One song by a one album band, even a good one, doesn’t make a legacy. (I sampled other songs from the album and found few that came as close.)
I’d never consider “no one sounds like them” to be anything more than standard hyperbole when making a generality. With the tens - hundreds? - of thousands of songs produced every year, no listener can know all of them. I’ve never heard of Toy Matinee. My loss, perhaps, but that still leaves tens - hundreds? - of thousands of bands and songs I’ve never heard of even though I’ve spent many hours listening. I and presumably @Just_Asking_Questions can only generalize on what we’ve heard.
If you’re saying that no one should generalize about music, I’d ask for world peace at the same time. The odds of either are about equal although I wouldn’t object to achieving those dreams.
It sure as hell was an insult when we started using it. I went to an upper crust school in those days, and knew Those Preppies who wore Lacoste shirts (collars “popped”, natch), with pastel sweaters loosely tied around the necks:
“Say, Muffy, we’re partying on Dadsy’s 42-foot cruiser tonight. It’s got a reel-to-reel with Seals, Crofts, Loggins, Messina, Fleetwood, Mac… and Toto, too.”
From the wiki:
Understood as a pejorative term,[6]yacht rock referred, in part, to a stereotypical yuppieyacht owner enjoying smooth music while sailing. Many “yacht rockers” included nautical references in their lyrics, videos, and album artwork…
Not saying that at all. Sorry if my comments sounded like I was challenging you; I only mentioned the two songs because at one time I thought they were by SD(Mary’s Prayer less so). I still can’t see Too Sweet as yacht rock, though, How about ‘Dirty Work’ ? That feels pretty yachty to me.
Somewhere along the line, perhaps around 1971, rock could go into all these different directions and still be called rock. Young college women could have Bread and America; rich college women had Carly Simon; Nixon ended the draft and thereby rebellion rock would go on hiatus until punk, and instead introspective singer/songwriters were a thing. And the kids listening to Led Zeppelin and BTO thought they were just continuing on the same line started by Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran.
Yacht rock just got the name because the YouTube parody comedians were there in LA near the marinas. It could just as easily been called “Aspen Ski Lodge rock.” Both its musicians and its audience had done well by their hard work and by being favored by the status quo. It was the polar opposite of punk/new wave; which came and went at the same time as yacht. And both were eclipsed in the mid-80s, as most popular music styles are, when Black musicians reclaim what they’d originated for a brief cycle until white acts come back in a new form to overrun the charts all over again.
As with many things I think it’s a question of “I know it when I hear it,” i.e. technical details and labelling might be used for things as diverse as Jackson Browne (L.A: Country Rock) and Steely Dan (N.Y. Jazz Rock) without any of them actually being yacht rock.
The quintessential YR artist was mentioned upthread by @kenobi_65 and i’ll post this as exhibit A:
Agreed. Danny Wilson is sophistipop, along with their contemporaries like ABC, The Christians, Curiosity Killed The Cat, Swing Out Sister, The Blue Nile, Wet Wet Wet, etc
I must admit, I’m having a hard time distinguishing between many of these so-called archetypical yacht rock artists, like Scaggs’s Jo Jo up there, or the Steely Dan I know, and the smooth jazz stylings of George Benson, Bobby Caldwell, later Bill Withers or Michael Franks .
Genre-wise, I can’t really tell the difference between, say, Steely Dan’s Hey Nineteen and Michael Franks’ One Bad Habit. The quality varies, but they seem like the same genre to me.
Lots of overlap in there, IMO. Bobby Caldwell’s one big hit in the U.S., “What You Won’t Do For Love,” is a perfect fit with the yacht rock “style” (and it’s one of my favorite songs).
