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 that of the next closest competitors (1981 and 1983). And finally, twelve 1982 YR songs hit the top 20, besting 1979 by 1 song.
Let's take a closer look at 1982.
The Albums
I didn't use it as a criteria, but 1982 also comes out on top in terms of the number of YR albums.
Foremost is Michael McDonald's solo debut, a record that ranked number 2 on our albums list. Number 3 on the list was also released in 1982, Greg Guidry's Over the Line. Let's not forget Toto's IV, Bill LaBounty's self-titled record, and Roby Duke's Not the Same. Or a handful of albums that didn't make the list, but carried the YR torch. These include Kenny Loggins's High Adventure, Dionne Warwick's Friends In Love, the Pointer Sisters's So Excited!, and Donald Fagan's The Nightfly. Michael Jackson's Thriller, an album that has a lot of YR cred, snuck into 1982 at the very end, but its greatest cultural impact was on the following year.
The Songs
1982 YR Essentials by artists not mentioned above include such heavy-hitters as Marc Jordan's "Margarita," Tom Scott's "Sure Enough," and Al Jarreau's "Girls Know How." The second tier ain't shabby either: Larry Lee's "Don't Talk," Eric Tagg's "No One There," Dan Fogelberg's "Missing You," Randy Goodrum's "Fool's Paradise," George Duke's "You," and Player's "Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid" among many, many others.
The YR songs of 1982 also did very well on the charts. Toto went to #1 and #2 with "Africa" and "Rosanna." Michael McDonald's "I Keep Forgettin'" got to #4. So did Lionel Richie with "You Are." Kenny Loggins's "Heart To Heart" got to #15. Basically, you couldn't listen to the radio or go to the public pool in 1982 without hearing Yacht Rock.
The Why
Why was 1982 the year that YR hit its apex? As follows is some wild speculation.
The rise of the Yuppie stereotype in the early '80s during Ronald Reagan's first term as president of the U.S. Let's face it, there was plenty of music in 1982 with a ton more "cred" than YR. But if you were fairly well off financially and maybe had a boat (or access to one) and wanted to listen to music that made you feel good and wasn't at all challenging, YR was there for you.
The first commercial peak for YR was in 1979. It took a couple of years for those artists to craft follow-ups, and for others to jump on the bandwagon.
Along that same line of thinking, it took some time for YR to evolve into its final form. While the early stuff might have leaned more toward the soft rock, jazz, or disco, the later YR sound was more indebted to rock and soul.
Popular music was in a transition period from disco and new wave toward the corporate rock and dance pop that would defined the middle of the decade. Yacht Rock split the difference, and was one of the few musical genres that welcomed all comers. Black, hippie, rocker, hipster, country, or whatever, you could find a home in YR.
The End
What's interesting to me is how quickly YR went from on top of the world to nearly nonexistent. Despite all the successes of 1982, 1938 became the last "official" year of the the genre. In 1983, the number of YR songs dropped by almost 100. The number of Essentials fell by half. Only four YR songs made it into the top 20 on Billboard. This latter fact is likely the smoking gun. As you can see below, YR 's fortunes had been steadily building year by year. There was bound to be a drop, it's just unusual how precipitous it was.
And as it turned out, most artists were willing to pivot away from the sound. Artists like Kenny Loggins and Toto had always contained multitudes. Others, such as Marc Jordan and Bill LaBounty, were able to go back behind the scenes. Still others found success in corporate rock - Bill Champlin with Chicago, Richard Page and Steve George with Mr. Mister. It was the Robbie Duprees and the Chrisopher Crosses who were left out in the cold, though revival of interest in YR in the past decade has been a boon to them, I'm sure.
The Rankings
Before I go, here are the rankings for all eight years of the YR phenomenon.
8. 1976
7. 1977
6. 1983
5. 1978
4. 1979
3. 1980
2. 1981
1. 1982
Comments