Yacht Rock Friday, Week 1

A special summertime series for the month of June

Since Memorial Day is over and we’ve unofficially kicked off summer, I thought it was time for some fun in the sun. To me, nothing says summer like Yacht Rock.

What’s Yacht Rock? I’ve often said that you can’t easily define it, but you know it when you hear it. Masterclass has a pretty good definition:

Yacht rock refers to the soft rock that dominated FM radio airwaves in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Yacht rock is characterized by glossy production, breezy vocals, and bouncy rhythms…

I would add that Yacht Rock suggests an idealized lifestyle that we all aspire to in the summer. With that, I’m doing a special series every Friday in the month of June where I’ll highlight three classic Yacht Rock tunes. I hope you’ll enjoy these.

“Escape (The Pina Colada Song),” Rupert Holmes

This song might be the low-hanging fruit of the Yacht Rock genre, which is fine as long at that low-hanging fruit is coconuts and pineapples.

Rupert Holmes had a knack for writing great story songs, and he wrote one about a self-absorbed couple who sought to cheat on each other using personal ads. Turns out, the couple responded to each other’s ads and met up for a rendezvous.

It’s a clever song, even if it’s been overplayed throughout the years. Besides, who really likes getting caught in the rain?

“Lotta Love,” Nicolette Larson

There aren’t many women in Yacht Rock, which makes Nicolette Larson’s only top 10 hit worth mentioning. The other notable feature of “Lotta Love” is that the song’s writer was Neil Young, one of the last names we’d ever associate with Yacht Rock.

Larson’s friend Linda Ronstadt suggested that Nicolette record Young’s tune, and Ted Templeman, who is as much a fixture of the Yacht Rock genre as any of the artists, produced it.

The result was a smooth, sophisticated pop hit with just a hint of disco, and it was tailor-made to be a hit. It’s just too bad that Larson couldn’t follow it up with more.

“Lowdown,” Boz Scaggs

One of the most soulful voices to emerge in the ‘70s was Boz Scaggs. He played with the Steve Miller Band in its early days, and he released a couple of albums that met with middling sales. His 1976 album Silk Degrees nearly suffered the same fate until a last-ditch effort at a radio single changed everything.

“Lowdown” is soulful, sophisticated pop-rock that broke on R&B radio first, but then it caught fire on the pop charts as well, hitting #3 and winning Scaggs and his co-writers a Grammy for Best R&B Song.

Possibly the biggest Yacht Rock legacy from Silk Degrees is that the core of Scaggs’ band on the album went on to form the band Toto.

Photo by Bruno Martins on Unsplash