the.com/yacht rock
Soft rock so smooth it comes with its own built-in cruise control.
means A smooth, polished soft-rock genre from the late 1970s/early '80s—mellow grooves, silky vocals, and studio-perfect production, made for sailing metaphorically if not literally.
from Not an old word at all: 'yacht rock' was coined in the mid-2000s by the creators of a comedy web series of the same name, who used it to retroactively label the smooth, soft-rock sound of acts like Steely Dan, Christopher Cross, and Toto. The 'yacht' part riffs on the music's leisure-class, deck-shoes-and-cocktails vibe—the sound you'd imagine drifting from a yacht's cabin stereo—rather than any real nautical history. The term stuck, and a jokey nickname became a genuine, beloved genre label.
- name origin
- Coined decades later by a 2005 web series
- key figures
- Michael McDonald's voice haunts half the genre
- era
- Peaked late 1970s to early 1980s, pre-MTV
- irony
- Most artists never owned an actual yacht