3 Minutes, 49 Seconds

Now that we've learned about the Top 25 Yacht Rock Songs , the Top 20 Yacht Rock Albums , and the Top 16 Yacht Rock Artists , and we've discussed the phenomenon of Yacht Rock Dabblers, we can declare The Most Yacht Rock Year Ever. I looked at four major categories to figure out which year reigned supreme.  The number of YR songs, as determined by the Yacht or Nyacht guys. The average Yachtski score of those songs on the list. The number of Yacht Rock Essentials (score of 90 or higher) on the list. The number of top 20 hits on the list (according to the Billboard U.S. charts). As it turned out, the answer was pretty darn clear. One year came out ahead in three of the four categories, and virtually tied in the fourth. And that year was (drumroll)... 1982! 1982 had 211 YR songs on the list, 29 more than the next closest year (1981). Those songs had an average Yachtski score of 69.09, which was just a hair below 1983's 69.7. There are 14 Yacht Rock Essentials from 1982, double ...

Once Yacht Rock proved itself to be a commercial force in the music industry the late '70s with songs by Christopher Cross and Doobie Brothers topping the charts, the floodgates opened. Several long-established artists decided to try their hand at the genre, many even going as far as hiring YR regulars to write, produce, and play on their records. As follows is a survey of some of the most notable Yacht Rock Dabblers. First let's talk about some of the artists that were what I like to call "Tangentially Yacht Rock." They made quite a few YR songs over a span of years, but not quite enough for them to make it into the upper echelon of YR Artists : Keyboardist George Duke , with 13 songs on the Yachtski scale between 1978 and 1983. By the ratings, he would actually be #25 on the list of Top Yacht Rock Artists. But his career was just too eclectic to pigeonhole him as YR. The Pointer Sisters are in a similar situation, with 13 songs between 1978 and 1983, but a career t...

We've talked about the songs  and we've talked about the artists. Now let's talk about the albums. If a person wanted to build a killer Yacht Rock collection on vinyl, what records do they absolutely need to have? I kept this one simple. I averaged the Yachtski scores of all the songs of the album that had been rated. The albums with the highest scores made the list. Well, sort of. As with the Top 25 YR Songs list, I instituted a one-per-artist rule. Just so you know, that means you should also seek out Steely Dan's Gaucho (1980), Al Jarreau's Breakin' Away (1981), Christopher Cross's Another Page (1983), the Doobie Brothers's  One Step Closer (1980), and Robbie Dupree's Street Corner Heroes (1981). That would round you out to a nice Top 25. 20. Bill Champlin : Runaway (1981) Yachtski Average : 59.56 YR Tunes : 6 (" Runaway ", "Take It Uptown", "One Way Ticket", "Satisfaction", "Without You", ...

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 ...