Just watched the Music Box documentary on Yacht Rock and while I really enjoyed the doc and learned a lot, I have a few thoughts.
Let’s get something straight right away. What you think you know about yacht rock, the fluffy sound of pastel sunsets and private islands that has become this new-age cultural obsession, probably isn’t it. You’ve heard it described as “easy listening,” “smooth,” and “classic,” but that’s missing the point. It’s not just the music. It’s the myth, the lifestyle, and more importantly, the swagger of a scene that existed so perfectly between 1975 and 1984 that it might as well have been designed by a board of directors on a private jet circling above Malibu. But let’s go deeper. Let’s talk about the boat.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Dr. J, come on, you’re gonna write a whole column about yacht rock? About that thing that’s been hijacked by irony and people who don’t even know who Steely Dan is?” Yes. Yes, I am. Because yacht rock isn’t just about the Steely Dan hits or Hall & Oates’s most absurdly catchy singles. It’s about capturing that moment in time when the music was way too smooth for its own good, when it gleamed like a diamond but had a heart of condescending, bougie brass. This is the kind of music that, if it were a drink, would be a gin and tonic mixed by someone who’d never seen a factory, whose whole life had been spent swimming through trust funds and palm trees. And that’s what makes yacht rock not only fascinating but, in a sick way, beautiful.
The term itself came from a set of YouTube videos where some twentysomething comedians, probably using too much gel in their hair, tried to describe the genre by showing clips of a pretend Michael McDonald crooning into a microphone in a ridiculously pristine studio and footage of people on boats with their aviator glasses reflecting back the California sun. It was a term born out of the early 2000s nostalgia machine, washed through a modern lens of irony and undercut by hipsters who loved to act like they were the first to discover what we were already all too familiar with from an incessant amount of radio airplay. But when you put the irony aside—yes, even you, Mr. Mustache and Lumberjack Flannel Guy—the truth is undeniable: yacht rock is brilliant, and in its own way, it’s a microcosm of the 1970s and early ’80s: the last days of the American dream before it descended into the ironic, grating corporate nightmare it would later become. Think in terms of the corporate rock of ’80s Journey or later period Styx.
Yacht Rock isn’t just music—it’s a way of being. A sonic ritual, a testament to the last great age of the American elite who could pull off a smirk without breaking a sweat or even the tiniest hint of sarcasm. The millionaires who sat at dinner parties telling stories about private planes, untraceable offshore bank accounts, and their perfectly groomed Labradoodles. And, yeah, when they popped in a Hall & Oates tape or fired up the Boz Scaggs album on vinyl, they weren’t just looking for an aesthetic. No, this was the soundtrack to their lives, their enviable lives where everything was polished and dripped with the perfect mixture of effortless cool, and terrifying boredom.
Yacht Rock is fundamentally lazy. This isn’t rock music for people who give a damn about being rebellious or standing for anything. This is the sound of those who’ve long given up on caring and instead embraced the art of looking like they don’t care at all. And if you’ve ever wondered what happens when the desire for wealth and success collides with a complete and utter lack of passion—look no further. This is yacht rock’s emotional landscape. Look at the lyrics of “Africa” by Toto, for instance: it’s the sonic equivalent of sitting in a mansion in a hot tub while someone brings you another margarita. There’s no world-threatening crisis in the background, no apocalyptic landscape looming on the horizon. The only looming thing is the sunset on a yacht deck, the plush leather seats in the air-conditioned salon, and the real prospect of not doing anything for the next 45 minutes while a vague sense of satisfaction pervades your soul.
I’m not saying yacht rock isn’t talented. It’s composed with musical precision that I, and maybe you too, have to admit is impossible to ignore. The chord progressions are impeccable, smooth without crossing into sugary. The musicianship? Slicker than a greased weasel. Michael McDonald’s falsetto was made to soar over a sea of impeccably placed synthesizers and guitars that no longer knew how to rock—only to glide, dream-like, toward the horizon. Jeff Porcaro’s drumming on Toto’s hits has a loose-tight perfection that makes you feel like you’re cruising, even if you’re sitting in your bedroom, staring at a T-shirt with a tiger on it.
But there’s an undercurrent to yacht rock that sets it apart from your average cheesy ‘70s pop. It’s the dark side of paradise, the awareness of its own emptiness, a reflection of a time when everyone, in a desperate attempt to have it all, realized that they had lost it. It’s that strange, magnetic pull between desperation and detachment.
Take, for example, the 1979 smash hit “What a Fool Believes” by the Doobie Brothers. It’s a killer track, sure—undeniably catchy, sweet, and clean. But the song’s protagonist, though utterly convinced he’s still in the game with some former lover, is a fool. It’s almost a warning, but not quite, a portrait of men in their prime, still obsessed with their fading youth, convinced they can recapture it, even though they never could. Yacht rock is rife with these kinds of paradoxes. The juxtaposition of slick, professional presentation and emotional desolation makes it deeply compelling, even as it lures you into its own trap.
Some would say that yacht rock is just ’70s soft rock with the volume turned down. I get it; it’s easy to dismiss. It’s easy to call this stuff middle-aged dad music or even worse, corporate background noise. But dismissing yacht rock is like dismissing the materialism of the 1980s by calling it just ‘cheap plastic.’ You don’t really get it unless you understand that the music was the product of an era, a time when the American dream was sold with a glossy, well-packaged exterior but was as hollow as the yachts it was named after. The lush, tropical sounds could’ve only come from an era obsessed with excess but hiding an ugly truth beneath the surface. There’s something unsettling about yacht rock, an idea that keeps pulling you in even as you feel yourself getting stuck. It’s like a perfectly formed trapeze swing at the edge of the world—inviting, smooth, but ultimately designed for you to fall off into the unknown.
Yacht rock also does something even rarer—it’s tragic without being overtly melancholic. When I listen to Steely Dan’s “Peg,” for instance, I can hear a longing in the gleaming production, a sense of trying to perfect something that can never be perfected. The track glistens like the dashboard of a car you never want to get out of. The keyboard melodies are so tight you could cut glass with them, but then Donald Fagen sings about a love that doesn’t care. And that’s the thing: Yacht Rock is all about yearning for something just out of reach, even as it sips from the top of the financial food chain. It’s crafted into a beautiful lie we’re all willing to buy into because we think that we need it. In the end, the joke’s on us, but the joke sounds damn good as we gently nod or heads to the tune.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Yacht rock is not about rocking. This isn’t your punk or your heavy metal or even your classic rock. This is smooth sailing, low-effort, aesthetically tuned, self-aware decadence that’s more about the vibe than the actual substance. It’s a celebration of excess, yes, but more than that—it’s the soundtrack of the very realization that excess itself is meaningless. So let’s set aside the hipster irony and take the music for what it is: a time capsule of a world that floated effortlessly toward the horizon without ever looking back. A place where love and loss, wealth and alienation, beauty and emptiness were all woven together in a smooth, crystalline melody with unassailable harmonies.
And here’s the thing—if you’ve ever found yourself on a boat, or even just on the edge of a dream, trying to forget the world for a moment, yacht rock will be there waiting for you, like an old friend who never quite left. So yeah, it’s Yacht Rock. It’s slick, it’s soft, and it’s, in its own absurd way, the music of a generation that sailed too close to the sun.
And God help us, it still shines.
your tuesday afternoon alternative 