Oh, much of it is beautiful music, there’s no denying that, nor the sophistication and mastery that created it.
What the butthurt Boomers are missing is that it was, intentionally or not, the theme music playing in the background while Generation Jones and GenX were being told “Hey, we got ours. What’s your problem? We’re working on our portfolios and divorces now, and Regan is really getting things back on track now, even if he did piss us off back when we were at Berkley and UCLA. And that loud, chaotic music we made? That was great, but you doing it now is just quaint and derivative. You’ll never be anything besides derivative of us. You can’t be upset about Kent State forever, can you?”
Of course, Devo did remain upset about Kent State, and made music that protested the dehumanizing industrial state; and their playing style parodied how rock was no more than a creatively-bankrupt corporate sedative that could be made by machines.
But today you can buy a captain’s hat and go to a yacht rock party, or a red plastic art-techno lampshade hat and go to a Devo party. So it all evens out to the LCD, except for those who have honestly equipped themselves for appreciation.
We called that “candelabra music,” of course including, though not limited to Liberace. Also in the background in service to Renzo Cesana as The Continental
I’d just like to note for the record that as someone who is not American - yet considers himself well-versed in American culture - I’ve never encountered the term “Yacht Rock” outside the SDMB. I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of those bands on the radio here, either.
Also not American, but I had heard of it, and also regularly heard some of the music, here - only select tracks, though, the oldies stations here only seem to know one or two tracks by each of the YR pantheon. Definitely no deep cuts.
Perhaps it matters how into music you are? Do you read music mags, etc?
I don’t know why but I thought Yacht Rock got it’s name from the location where current fans of the music listen to it, not where they were when they first heard it.
Not since my parents cancelled their subscription to Rolling Stone 20 years ago, no.
It’s not like I don’t read about music - I can go down deep rabbit holes reading about a band I like and a song I’m curious about. But no, I’ve pretty much abandoned broader music journalism, albeit not intentionally.
According to Wikipedia, the term “Yacht Rock” is relatively recent and wasn’t actually used during the period when the music was created. Back in the 70s it was just “soft rock” or “adult contemporary” or maybe “West Coast sound”.
To my uneducated and under-informed eye, the term “yacht rock” was coined to connote the financially comfy lazy hedonistic 60-somethings who wanted to listen to the most unchallenging of Top 40s fare from their youth. IOW, labeling it now as the schmaltzy background Muzak it wasn’t really back then but has since become.
IMO the name didn’t / doesn’t get any deeper than that. Clearly it struck home with the general public as the term is now well-embedded into popular use.
This is a lazy attitude. Throwing in the towel isn’t always the best thing. Yes, maybe the jokesters will win. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth standing up against for the people that care about music. Yacht Rock is bullshit.
I agree that the term wasn’t in use back then, but the music that is lumped into this group were always the type of music that was going to be muzak. The terms “soft rock” and “adult contemporary” were already in use by 1980, and even Steely Dan’s music was headed to the airport bathroom immediately upon release.
My early teen-aged self lumped most of those bands into “parent rock” at the time. My parents didn’t listen to them - they were of the generation that thought The Beatles ruined rock & roll. But my friend’s parents sure did listen to it. I remember one of my friends praising his parent’s copies of Desperado and The Long Run one afternoon and thinking “This kid’s got to get out more often, my sister’s record collection rocks harder”
How exactly do we fight SiriusXM? Or the cable systems that have a yacht rock music channel? Not listen? That only deprives us. Most of us here enjoy having yacht rock channels, because they play a lot of good music that we like.
And that music getting played means that the writers of that music get paid more. Boycotts would hurt them more than it hurt anyone else.
Coincidently, I just came back from dinner at my cousin in law’s house (he’s a successful attorney in his early 60s). He must have been streaming the Yacht Rock channel on Spotify or SiriusXM or whatever service he uses because it was basically every song mentioned in this thread.
That includes Peg by Steely Dan, which is basically as YR as they come.
Honestly it’s not bad music. Certainly not any worse than Justin Bieber or Dua Lipa or other modern pop music.
Well, I normally wouldn’t appeal to authority, but Rick Beato decisively dismantled this ignorant creation of a “genre” in a comparatively brief rant at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEYUw2kiRfc.
I’ll summarize what I see as the best and most irrefutable point of Beato’s take: “Yacht Rock” or “Soft Rock” is only meaningful if one excludes any evaluation or even audition of any or many of the musicians involved.
Steve Gadd? Chuck Rainey? Bernard Purdie? Larry Carlton? Skunk Baxter? Victor Feldman? Wayne Shorter?
Those kinds of musicians show up to play. First call musicians who could have done any project they wanted to, and did. No fucking way they’re thinking of some douche wearing a captain’s hat while performing in the studio or live. Might be they were thinking of a fat roll of cash, granted, since they are professionals, and maybe a writing credit, but people like that didn’t phone it in, ever.
It’s not the fault of the musicians if some tin-eared rube cannot discern playing of the highest caliber on nearly every instrument on a given tune.
So, some youtube nerds came up with the term “Yacht Rock” and displayed an astonishing lack of discernment and taste. Is what I gather.
Did anyone here claim that Yacht Rock was not competently performed music? The issue here was what they were playing, not how they were playing it. If you gave a crap song to the best musician in the world, they’ll still record a crap song.
