3 Minutes, 49 Seconds

It was more complicated than I expected to determine the Top Yacht Rock artists. My first thought was to simply average the Yachtski score all of a particular artist's songs and choose the top 10, 15, 20, whatever. But then I realized this method didn't factor in the number of songs by an artist had that had been classified as Nyacht Rock. It also didn't account for an artist's contributions to other artists' songs. So I devised a system to account for that, as well as total number of YR songs and essentials. Like the Yachtski Scale, it provides a score out of 100. If an artist is above 50 they are classified as Yacht Rock. The higher they are above 50, the more YR they are. That's how I ended up with 16 artists, instead of the more traditional multiple of 5. (If I had rounded up to 20, the remaining four would have been Nielsen/Pearson, Ray Parker, Jr., Robbie Dupree, and Bobby Caldwell, but all fell just below the 50% threshold). * Something that strikes me as...

I've wanted to write about Yacht Rock for awhile now, but I was spurred into action by a 2024  Paste  article that the site recently re-shared in it's daily newsletter. When I saw the title "The 25 Greatest Yacht Rock Songs of All Time," I clicked on it without delay.  Then, with growing dismay I scanned through the author's choices. At that time I wasn't terribly well-versed with the Yachtski Scale, but I knew enough to know that something was wrong. I don't want to dwell too much on this, but the author of that piece, like so many others, had expanded the definition of YR much too far, egregiously so. Of the 25 songs listed, only 9 were designated as YR on the Yachtski Scale, and only 3 of those 9 were on the essentials list. Thirteen of the remaining were scored as Nyacht Rock, and three weren't even considered. As a reminder: Here are the general parameters for a YR song: High or "clean" production values Jazz and R&B influences Use o...

We hadn't been dating long when I learned of my future wife's love of Kenny Loggins. It was late 2006 or early 2007, and the term "Yacht Rock" was just emerging into the popular consciousness. I bought her the 1982 album High Adventure at Cheapo Records, and we danced along to "Heart to Heart" and "This is It." Soon we began revisiting songs from our early childhood: "Sailing," "Reminiscing," "How Long?," "Baby, Come Back," and "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)." About five years ago I began making a concerted effort to learn more about Yacht Rock (YR from here forward), and discovered the Yacht or Nyacht podcast and website, which was created by  the four guys who coined the term back in 2005 - J.D. Ryznar, Steve Huey, Hunter Stair, and David Lyons - in response to a growing misunderstanding over what constitutes YR and what doesn't. It seems that some people (even including seasoned music ...