This was an A++ watch for me despite the fact that “yacht rock” was coined in 2005 by guys making a comedy web series. They are in this and really engaging. This is the stuff I grew up on and what strikes me is that despite the softness/jazziness of a lot of it, the creation of it was much more organic and centered on musicians and studio nerds than a lot of current rock and pop. A lot of late nights and shitty apartments and dedication. I went in with a bit of a chip because Steely Dan is … not really yacht rock by my definition but this is directly addressed. It’s more that they begat it and that a lot of their session folks played on everything. Spoiler: Michael Jackson’s Thriller album is basically Toto.

Also, Michael Macdonald comes off as the most earnest lovable person. Nice insight in the doc that a lot of this music represented early steps by men to be sensitive and talk about their feelings openly, which was Not Done back then.

Appreciated the inclusion of Questlove, Thundercat, and a couple of other black musicians giving their perspectives. I totally remember the What’s Happening episode where they want to go see the Doobie Brothers.
posted by caviar2d2 at 3:42 PM on January 1 [5 favorites]

I knew that Christopher Cross played the smoking solo on Ride Like The Wind but there was another anecdote about his early guitar career that blew my mind. I won’t spoil it.
posted by caviar2d2 at 3:43 PM on January 1 [3 favorites]

I understand their reasoning and explanation behind excluding Fleetwood Mac under the Yacht Rock umbrella, but...Fleetwood Mac is Yacht Rock and this is absolutely a hill I will die on.

despite the fact that “yacht rock” was coined in 2005 by guys making a comedy web series.

I for one, am here for the 'over specialized, extremely narrow genre names' that are made up after the fact, regardless of who's doing it. My buddy and I listen to lots of ambient music, and will routinely delineate between Wizard Music (Bo Hansson, Shadowfax), Deep Breakfast (Ray Lynch, Suzane Ciani, Mort Garson), or drawing lines between something being 'adventure music' or 'exotica.' It's good clean fun.

We were listening to Harumi Honso's Pacific and like it's very Yacht-rock adjacent. I tend to think that there's enough jazz influence that lots of City-Pop could overlap the Yacht Rock category- it has lots of the hallmarks- supremely good production, jazz influences, softer rock generally. Pacific is so far the only entry in our homespun "Yachtxotica" genre.
posted by furnace.heart at 4:14 PM on January 1 [9 favorites]

In case anybody is interested, Rick Beato has some opinions about "yacht rock."
posted by sardonyx at 5:23 PM on January 1 [4 favorites]

(Not the time or place, but if Thriller is Toto, then so is Aja. Thriller, even with features for Paul McCartney and Eddie Van Halen, is a Quincy Jones Presents Michael Jackson album.)
posted by box at 5:50 PM on January 1 [1 favorite]

It's fun but I also felt like it was an extended series edited down to one documentary. It felt all over the place.

I do like that Christopher Cross was basically like "yeah, drugs" when it came to his career. That's the kind of honesty I appreciate.

I am a weird fan of Toto. I know "Africa" is problematic but that synth solo!

I tend to judge music docs if I want to go buy music from the people featured. I didn't really with this one. I already liked the musicians I liked. It's a fun watch but I don't know if I really got that much out if it.

(Other than that Rick Moranis Michael McDonald segment, which I had not seen before. Also, hi, I'm a weirdo who will talk to you about Moranis' career.)
posted by edencosmic at 6:01 PM on January 1 [2 favorites]

In case anybody is interested, Rick Beato

I'm not, because I really don't like Rick Beato, who is IMO a bloviating mansplainer of the absurdly hubristic opinion that he can explain to people why music is "good" as if beauty is not actually in the ear of the beholder, but only his ear, his magical Rick Beato ear! Anyway, no.

But! I clicked on it anyhow, and the first thing he says is that the term "Yacht Rock" is "offensive" which says to me that he never watched the original Channel 101 series and is therefore lacking the scholastic pedigree to even comment on the term itself. Based on the trailer for the doc, though, I'm sure Kenny Loggins is on his team.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:01 AM on January 2 [4 favorites]

You don't have to like "Beato the personality". But I urge you to watch any of his long form interviews.

Beato's interviews with (for example) Michael McDonald, Mohini Day, Stewart Copeland, Brian May, George Benson, Alan Parsons, Steve Gadd, Tori Amos, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, Chuck Rainey, Emily Saliers, Joel Rubin (and many more) are completely awesome. He stays out of the way of the interviewee and lets the artists talk and tell their own stories. He is a fantastic interviewer. I firmly believe his interviews (I have not seen every one, but most are in-depth and a full hour, or more) belong in the Smithsonian or some other archival place. I especially love his interviews with the session musicians of the '70s, as those guys (yes, they were mostly guys) were hard working beasts of pure talent, whose names never hit the spotlight. Fascinating stories.

(the only interview I found lacking recently was David Gilmour, because it seemed that Gilmour thought it was a typical press junket interview and it was just a big letdown).

I had no idea Beato had such vocal detractors. I find him affable and generally interesting. Often he goes too far into music theory which is way over my head. But those interviews are stellar, considering how shallow and short so many entertainment interviews tend to be.

Nicely recorded, simply yet effectively produced and I'll say it again: Beato stays out for he way and lets the artists do the talking!
posted by SoberHighland at 7:23 AM on January 2 [4 favorites]

There was a time about a decade or so ago when my band was #2 in terms of yacht rock tribute band social media followers, but we don't do it full-time like some of those other bands can afford to do, so we've slipped in the rankings. Still amusing to see which band out of all of them got the HBO screentime.
posted by emelenjr at 7:28 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]

Is Beato perfect? No. As much as I love his deep dives into music theory and harmony, I find he's too critical and dismissive of music produced by women and for female listeners, but you can't say he's uninformed about his subject matter, and he does address the original Channel 101 series (the "scholastic pedigree") and explains why he's not a fan of the premise. That's all fair commentary.

I found his explanation of the origins of the term (and its creators) helpful, because I've only ever encountered the phrase here on MeFi, and I had no idea where it came from or what exactly it was supposed to entail (yes, I had a general idea, but nothing I could really pin down). It turns out, it's not really a thing--or at least a thing that existed as such in the moment, it's just some term coined by a couple of dudes to hang their hats on and give themselves a social media platform, so I learned something, that puts the whole situation in perspective.

(Also, I totally disagree with Beato: not everybody can have his perfect ear. I certainly don't and I'll never be able to develop it, as numerous music teachers would swear to on a stack of bibles--or handwritten Bach manuscripts, take your pick.)
posted by sardonyx at 7:39 AM on January 2 [1 favorite]

["Yacht Rock" is] just some term coined by a couple of dudes to hang their hats on and give themselves a social media platform

That is completely untrue. It was coined in service of a comedy series which was extremely funny and influential, to the point where it spawned memes and cover bands and this very documentary. That Beato frames it in this manner just speaks to his rockist chauvinism . The dude cannot take a joke and doesn't understand that this "offensive" form of what is, at its core, flattery, is forging a new fanbase for these artists. He's just an old crank who think that He Knows Best and is the rock equivalent of every white music teacher or Credentialed Adult of my youth who made big shows of distinguishing between Real Music (classical) and foofy pop / rock / whatever. Even the most "open minded" of those people would say they loved all music, "except rap."

There is just such a strong through-line of white gatekeeping and musical respectability politics of which Beato is 100% part that I can't take any of his criticisms of anything seriously, regardless of how good he is at theory / guitar / etc. He's just there to finger-wag at people who aren't towing the line.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:29 AM on January 2 [8 favorites]

...such a strong through-line of white gatekeeping and musical respectability politics...

Sheesh. I guess Rick Beato cannot be all things to everyone! I don't agree with some of his videos, and some I just don't bother watching. I find that Beato has a lot of love for many different types of music, which is part of what I liked about him to begin with.

He's open about the fact that he's mostly interested in the music he grew up with and that was formative to him. Yet he's very rarely dismissive of music in general. He seems to see the good in things. (Many content creators are just a hate-train, which I want to part of. Beato is not like that at all.)

Any YouTuber is going to have specific musical tastes and preferences. Hell, I have a pretty open mind about music but I will admit that I have musical preferences! Do you claim to not have tastes or preferences?

Do you have any YouTubers with the type of content Beato has (but with non-white "through-line gatekeeping") you'd like to share? I'd honestly like to see more content creators with even half the effort and talent for interviewing that Beato has.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:03 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]

Do you claim to not have tastes or preferences?

I do not! But I also don't use my tastes or preferences to declare music "good" or "bad" because it just, like, my opinion, man.

My degree is in composition. I've written for orchestra, scored some films, written music for television, released albums, analyzed lots of songs, etc. And my opinion on theory, presumed mastery of which undergirds most of the RB-esque music explainer youtube influencers, is that it is great for understanding the structure of a piece of music and how it relates to a style / genre / etc, but absolutely useless at explaining why a piece of music is good. I'll admit that I just don't like music theory influencers as a category because, having been in the belly of the conservatory beast, I find that personality type to be extraordinarily grating. I feel the same way about the School of Rock, which is essentially a rock music conservatory.

Anyway, this is a well-worn axe of mine that I'm grinding here, but suffice it to say that that whiteness and gatekeeping via academization is absolutely at the core of conservatory culture and is anathema to art. And, I mean, that's really what made Rick so mad about "Yacht Rock" - it does not pay what he considers to be due respect to the constructed artifice of True Greatness that he subscribes to and profits from. How can his argument from authority resonate with people who think "your shitty music makes me barf, Loggins" is hilarious, yet also love "What A Fool Believes?" It can't. It makes him look stuffy, which he is. Donald Fagen is also a stuffy crank, but at least he has great music to show for it.

I'm not here to harsh on people who like Rick's videos, because if you get something out of them, then that's great! I may have my issues with the whole concept, but if it opens your mind to new things and helps you give names to the shapes you hear, who am I to say that is bad? I'm just not game for him to trash talk Yacht Rock.
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:16 PM on January 2 [6 favorites]

Also, to state the obvious, Fagen is at least in part doing a bit as a stuffy crank; if he weren't, his manager wouldn't have called back and given permission to use six Steely Dan songs in the documentary immediately following the phone conversation that ended with "go fuck yourself".

I'm not going to pretend I'm unbiased here (see one of the very few FPPs I've ever made and my comments therein), but as soon as Beato mispronounced Ryznar, I closed the tab.

I for one, am here for the 'over specialized, extremely narrow genre names' that are made up after the fact, regardless of who's doing it.

You might want to look into Beyond Yacht Rock, where the guys came up with numerous other "arbitrary genres" such as George Orwave, paranoid cocaine-fueled hits of the early '80s, and Try n' Raps ("my name is ____ and I'm here to say…").
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 10:48 PM on January 2 [3 favorites]

You might want to look into Beyond Yacht Rock, where the guys came up with numerous other "arbitrary genres"

'Camaro Summer' was my personal fave.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 1:12 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]

I watched- I don't hate the music, some of the songs are great, and the documentary is finely produced, but most of the guys they interview are just so high on their own supply.

"We could play anything"..."the best produced album ever". Man, no and no. That's why it's all tied to a definable genre - it all sort of sounds the same - because the ties between the guys are pretty strong.

That was the best thing about the youtube series - it took the piss out of these guys who really (apparently) still need it. Some of them have some fun - Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross -but others...man.

I'm not sure this is the only or even the most deserved musical genre that needs the piss taken out of it (I actually think the '60s artists -like the Laurel Canyon documentary) are worse, but we get what we get.

The facade kind of cracks a bit (oh our songwriting is sooo good) when they start talking about the lyrics to Toto's Africa, but they were very gentle with it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:14 PM on January 3

grumpybear69: I'd still urge you to listen to any of Beato's long form interviews with a musician you admire. There's a long list of them.

I'll let it go at this: You're Arguing from Authority re: Rick Beato. I'm not supporting every utterance the man has put on YouTube (maybe he mispronounced a name a few times... I've never done that!). Beato absolutely does not run the typical YouTube hate-train operation, and he's generally positive and enthusiastic of many different forms and varieties of music.

And I'll ask again if you can point to any YouTuber who produces such excellent quality, long form interviews where the interviewee stays out of the way and lets the subject speak at length on topics that they want to talk about. Hour-plus long interviews that go into great detail, and not just celebrity stories, but discussions about the music, the music business, and very often bringing up virtually unknown musicians who have influenced the subject's music. The Brian May interview was not just a bunch of "tell me about Freddie!" questions, but got deep inside how May created his distinctive guitar sounds back in the analog '70s, and the disparate influences that shaped Brian May as a musician.

Choose a more recent (less elderly) musician interview if you'd like. Every one of them (with the noted exception of the David Gilmour interview) runs deep and allows the musician a well-produced space to speak their minds and tell their stories.

Any other YouTuber you can point to who puts out content as consistently good as Beato's long form interviews? Genuine question, I'd love to find more.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:54 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

My problem with Beato is that he take the popular as an indicator of 'good' music, and then defines some (often extremely pedestrian IMO) technical features of their music that he wants to talk about as though that feature is what made them popular - not good musicians - but popular music - 'popular' as in sold a bunch of records. That of course means he has to ignore music that is less popular, because since it didn't sell it's less musically good.

Those two things don't have anything to do with one another.

I think that's why his video 'RE: yacht rock' makes him so angry - he can't imagine that anyone can find fault or have fun with this popular music he likes that 'totally rocks'.

I actually used to really like him, since he was a bit more open about his taste when he started, but now he's gone the curmudgeon route and is borderline insufferable when talking taste and not technical aspects of the music.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:42 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

I agree that Beato has been producing more grumpy engagement content recently that I haven't been enjoying. He still has a lot of great stuff there.

Ok, back to the Dock. I absolutely love me some Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers (both pre/post Michael McDonald). Fagen's response is exactly what I'd expect from a guy who seems to always approach music as serious business and can't wrap his head around people having fun with it.

There's not a week that's gone by for a few decades now where something 70's is playing in the house. My own independent music tastes began in the 80's, but growing up - "Soft Rock" and 70's folk (John Denver, Jim Croce, Cat Stevens, CSNY) and stuff from the 60's was constantly playing because that was mom's taste. So the stuff feels like home in a way - plus every time I hear that stuff it reminds me just how much we've lost the idea of groovy funky bass lines.

Are some of the guys interviewed a little high on their own supply and importance? Absolutely, but that's like the musician equivalent of old ball players getting together and telling catfish noodling stories. Everybody does it as they get old (or they go completely scorched earth the opposite way) - they just happened to have "bigger" stories to tell. But there's a reason that Duck Dunn gets the line "We had a sound powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline" in the Blues Brothers. Lots of those session guys believed that.

Also, Michael McDonald seems like he's just having a damn good time. Kenny Loggins seems eagerly excited and Cross just seems like a goofy guy who recognized that he caught lightning in a bottle for a hot minute.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:42 PM on January 6 [2 favorites]

Another vote for Rick Beato's long form interviews. Sure he is imperfect, and I don't always agree with him, and often skip his episodes a few minutes into them. But so what? We are going to demand purity tests on cultural commentators/historians now?

Broadly speaking he knows his stuff, both technical and historical, and he really does get out of the way and let the interviewee tell their story, which is the most important skill in an interviewer. I agree that those interviews should be permanently archived as significant cultural history.

(FWIW, I think the David Gilmour interview was not so great mainly because he is quite old – 78 going on 79 in March –  and presumably not as sharp and quick as he once was. He seemed to me to be having to work for responses that once would have come easily. Plus he has always had a measured considered response style in interviews.)

Beato has genuine passion for what he does, and has introduced me to a lot of great musicians I would had never heard of. Alan Mearns, for example, who is not just an excellent guitarist who works comfortably across genres, but is also an outstanding arranger/transcriber for guitar, which is a whole musical skill set on its own.

Whatever Beato's flaws, I for one am grateful for his work.

As for Donald Fagen, he was clearly in on the joke with his 'contribution' to the doco.
posted by Pouteria at 6:43 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

The guys (JD, Hunter, "Hollywood" Steve, and Dave) respond to the Beato video in this week's episode of The Yacht or Nyacht Podcast (from roughly 2:01 to 9:55; if anyone does jump to this, the worse than usual audio quality is because this episode was done via Zoom).
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 2:53 AM on January 8

We overall loved this DOCKumentary and agree that the premise of Steely Dan being primordial ooze from which YR was spawned is legitimate, and allows me to stop yelling "STEELY DAN IS NOT YACHT ROCK" from the hilltops. Questlove and Thundercat's commentary alone makes it worthwhile.

However I can't help wonder about what to me is one of THE key points to determine whether something is or is not YR, and that is "are artists female?" Because if they are, it's not YR. There appear to be zero women yacht rock artists... and either that completed slipped past everyone (which I doubt) or the doc creators just decided to not go there. To address that point would have been a pretty interesting discussion IMO but would have "tarnished the brand" probably, in addition to adding 1-5 or 20 minutes to the running time.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 1:10 PM on January 13

Nicolette Larson's 'Lotta Love'?

People who had at least a song or two that, if it wasn't yacht rock, was in view of the harbor: Fleetwood Mac, Rickie Lee Jones, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon

Someone who I would not have identified as yacht rock, but, after hearing their name come up, yeah, I can kinda see it: Sade
posted by box at 2:14 PM on January 13

There appear to be zero women yacht rock artists... and either that completed slipped past everyone (which I doubt) or the doc creators just decided to not go there.

Brenda Russell (who has seven songs "on the boat") did appear, though in keeping with your overall point, she should've been more prominent and certainly shouldn't have been the only woman.

Amy Holland's 1983 album On Your Every Word is pretty yacht-y, helped by it being produced by her husband, Michael McDonald.

As I've said elsewhere, being British, Sade is much more sophisti-pop than yacht rock, which Brits largely couldn't/didn't do.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 6:06 AM on January 15