The Earworm Podcast - Episode 2 Have Yachts or Have Nachts

On Episode 2 of The Earworm Podcast, Bryan Clark and Patrick Cloud dive into the smooth, meticulously crafted world of yacht rock—breaking down its origins, defining traits, and the artists who made it iconic. From the late ’70s through the mid-’80s, this era delivered some of the highest production value in recorded music, with pristine sound, sophisticated arrangements, and contributions from elite session players and engineers. The guys explore what makes the genre tick, including its harmonic complexity, polished aesthetic, and distinct sonic choices.

They also look at why yacht rock faded, pointing to the industry shift in the ’80s—MTV’s visual dominance, the rise of MIDI-driven production, and changing listener tastes with the emergence of hip-hop. Still, the genre has found new life in recent years, resurfacing through playlists, reunion tours, and a tongue-in-cheek cultural revival that celebrates its unmistakable vibe.

The conversation turns to songwriting, contrasting the darker, more nuanced storytelling of Steely Dan with the heartfelt, accessible style of Michael McDonald and Christopher Cross. The episode wraps with a candid critique of their AI-generated theme song—landing somewhere in the realm of “off-brand Billy Ocean”—while acknowledging that, even if it misses the mark, AI still has a place as a fun and accessible creative tool.

Playlist:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/earworm-episode-2-yacht-rock/pl.u-MDAWX7JIW2ylVd

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Well, this might be the funkiest episode that we do, or maybe the mildest episode that we do.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Or maybe the mildly funkiest episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Mild and funky is a really good way to describe Yacht Rock.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

I think so.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

So today is the day. We've been talking about this for a while now. Yeah. Came to the conclusion that it needed to be talked about in public. Right. There's been a lot of news lately. I saw a recent podcast, somebody pretty uh upset with the with the genre. I've seen people embrace the genre. I've seen people say, is it a genre? Which is a question that I kind of have.

SPEAKER_05 0:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

But today we're talking about yacht rock. Yacht rock. One of every favorite one of the favorite genres, if you can call it a genre. I'm going to keep saying, is it a genre? Because we don't really know. But we're going to discuss that today. So I guess for anybody listening, you probably want to know if you don't. What is what is yacht rock? Yammo be there.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yamo.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Yammo be there. So Brian Clark. What is yacht rock to Brian Clark? When somebody says yacht rock, what does it invoke to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Uh it invokes this this period of time that uh so much great music was made that was able to incorporate great feeling songs, that sort of emotional thing where they were kind of just steady, uplifting, but not like, you know, super anthemic. It wasn't like, you know, shouting from the clifftops kind of a thing. It was chill. It was it was vibey. Uh it was it was a bunch of, you know, it's just that organic nature that happens when a band sits in a room and just cuts it and gets the perfect performance and the vocals were on point, great harmonies. You know, there's all these elements that we can dissect. But I think for the most part, it would be what maybe previous to Yacht Rock Moniker invention, we might have called it uh soft rock or smooth pop or I don't know, can an adult contemporary? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

They wouldn't fall into that category. Is the I guess the question is is we'll get into who the bands were, the type of music, but what were they, what was it? Was it multiple genres that needed a needed a home for each other that that somehow, some way it got funneled to that? We know about the invention. We'll talk about the origins in a minute, but were they all mismatched, or do were they all under one genre? Because I look at a bunch of the different artists and I see them as different types of music a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

I think we had like we had the 70s were kind of a a magical decade in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

You know, but the top 100 were a lot of the 70s. It was a very interesting thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Right. Super diversity, super huge. Um so but the I think we had like five genres that were sort of happening. Uh none of them were yacht rock, wasn't named yet. But think about the 70s, right? We we sort of were coming in, it's still going strong, the singer-songwriter, so the sort of folky pop anti-war. Yeah. Totally. So everything from you know, Crosby Stills Nash to um to James Taylor, to Carol King, to Neil Diamond. Yeah, like I mean, there was a wide diversity there. Yeah. Um and then, of course, you had Ricky Lee Jones, like Chuck Ease and Love. God, what a great track. And and then and then you had um you also had the rock side. You started to have the stadium rock. This was when when rock music actually started to take off and real concert sales were starting to come in. You were having Led Zeppelin break the attendance records all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

The Chig Floyd's The Wall Tour where they had the giant theatrics that were going on.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

I mean, come on.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Oh, guitar rock, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah, uh, yeah, yeah. Right. It was like kind of this big rock. And then you had, so that's two, and then you had um you had punk music that started, right? Kind of eclipsed for me in in 78 with the Sex Pistols, Nevermind the Bullocks. We could do a whole show on that.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Yeah, the Ramones, Bad Religion was in 1980.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

I mean, that's so many, so many great bands that started to come out of that. And then the the the you know, the the offshoots like that. You know what I mean? Bad religion, um, you know, television, talking heads, you know, Blonde, the whole CBGB scene, but then over in the Across the Pond, you had, you know, you had the cramps, the dam, the buzzcocks, that all were stemming out of the pistols.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Definitely a later episode.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah, right. We will definitely do punctuate. Oh man. Anyway, so um so we had that, and then we had freaking disco.

SPEAKER_04 4:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Right? And and you think about what New York would have been like in the mid to late 70s. It was rough, it was edgy as shit, super sketchy. And then you had the beautiful people on one side of town going to Studio 54 and you know, snorting coke off of strippers' assholes. And then you had complicated. I mean, you know, right? And then you had the other side, which was down in the Bowery, which was the Ramones. And you know, you might get in a knife fight in the audience and you might not make it home. So either way, life risking.

unknown 5:31

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Uh so that takes us through four. The fifth one was everything else. Little bit of reggae, a little bit of, you know, just sort of uh this type of music that we're talking about. Rock that wasn't anthemic, big guitar-driven rock. It was everything else. That's where I think we've eventually called yacht rock, was kind of like what else is left?

SPEAKER_01 5:54

It's like that the funnel of these uh uh very intricately recorded and written bands. Now, so the origin of yacht rock, just so the we discussed this, was there is a internet TV show or an internet show called Channel 101, created by Dan Harmon and Rob Schraub, very incredible comedic writers, right? Yep, made a very raunchy type five-minute, 12-episode run of the creation of some of these yacht rock songs, and they incorporate they talked about uh Ms. Uh Loggins and they talked about Mike McDonald and all of the different ones that we know now as the pivotal or the the cornerstones of modern yacht rock, if you will. Um, and then we have post-yacht that we'll talk about later. But so the creation was really just came from a bunch of jokes that these comedic writers have put together, but after a couple of years it just caught on, and people were like, Oh, that's that's a great name for the for the genre. And to me, it's not really a genre. The yacht rock is more, I feel like it captures a feeling. It's like carefree California, smooth, very easy to listen to, yeah, digestible uh products, right? So that's where it comes from. But what is it? Like, what makes a yacht rock song? If we were to just say, okay, it's a genre, we have accepted it as what it is. What do you think are the things that contribute to an artist falling into the genre?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

I think we gotta start parsing it out. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

So to be an example, two, two rough example, right on the keyboard.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Um, yacht yacht rock would be let's say, well, let's say we were gonna do um, let's say it was gonna be like this. Right? Yeah, it's the beginning of reminiscing from Little River Band, right? But most importantly, it's it's this it's the sound of the roads. And and most of uh most of everything that we can think of, all of these songs, you know, we've put together a massively cool playlist that's six and a half hours long.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Uh we'll link in the description. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

We've done that, and you'll notice that the majority of these songs are inherently keyboard driven. So it wasn't the rock guys doing a whole lot of love or I want to rock and roll all night or back in the New York groove, you know, when KISS did their solo albums. Um it wasn't the knack, my Sharona. These were like keyboard-based, cool changes, a lot of good jazz changes, a lot of altered harmonies, cycling, back cycling 251 chord progressions to modulate. Um, a lot of really cool things. If you think of any of the Steely Dan songs and the Donald Fagan, you know, keyboard stuff, you know, Peg, Hey 19. Um well produced.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Incredibly well produced.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Probably the gold standard.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Or it and you listen to any just playlist of or even if you just go to Apple and look at the playlist of of Yacht Rock Essentials, yeah, all of it just it's majestic record making. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So what else contributes to the sound? So the roads, obviously, is the first, that's the big thing. That is drives it all. Keyboards driving it. We were talking earlier. I couldn't name a band in the genre that wasn't piano forward. Yeah. Or synth forward. And like they all are. Every single one that we named. Yeah, we'll get into those in a bit. But what else besides so aside from the piano and the masterful recording, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

What else do you think pushes a band there? Um, musically speaking, so great arrangements, great song form. Very clear. Most of the time that that these songs from this period happen, they're mostly in what I call the the abacab song form. Not to be confused with the song abacab. From Genesis. I know you're a Genesis man like myself. But like um it means basically that there's a there's a verse, there's a chorus, there's usually a bridge. And however you know, delineate those letters to the elements of the song, like A being a verse, B being a chorus, C being a bridge, spell abacab, you're gonna get those things. The majority of these rock songs from this period, this yacht rock songs, they have extremely strong choruses. They're not in the A A B A song form where you know the title of the song is usually the first line of the verse or the very last line, and there's not like a real strong chorus. All of these ones that we're talking about uh have great choruses. I mean, you know, uh and and and what a great chorus is, you know, songwriting one-on-one, right? For me, a great chorus will complete the following sentence. And what I really mean to say is, right, I just call to say I love you that, right? Or turn your love around. Write it. I mean, come on. Yeah, yeah. Undeniable. Yeah. Great, great choruses. I think all of this period of yacht rock is overwhelmingly in this abacab song form. So that form is one. Next is uh usually great arrangements within the band, heavy musicianship, a massive amount of of sort of bravado going on with all the players putting in these subtle licks and they're just jam-packing it. It's like a big multivitamin. A lot of showing off.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

It is. It is. But in a but not like in a progressive rock way.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Yeah, not like it was yes or you know, or whatever that was, you know, Mahavishnu Orchestra or you know, return to forever or brush. Yeah. Like it wasn't, it wasn't any of that kind of stuff. So we had this sort of like it was within a pop context, but it was sort of like sneaking it in, like, holy crap, man, these changes are dope. And the fills that they're playing are perfect, they're worked out, the parts work on it, you know, they're no one stepping on each other, there's a perfect amount of space. So the arrangement of this form is is another big one for me.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

It's interesting. I I I I noticed a lot too when when in consuming uh this product that there's a lot of like, I'm gonna stay heavily in minor for the verse, and then I'm gonna step right into major for the chorus. I'm gonna make that chorus just really shine. Yeah or vice versa. Where I've heard this major, major, major buildup, and then it drops and it goes into a minor for the chorus. And it's like those dynamics to me is just you know, just more proof of the songwriting and the arrangement aspect. I think it's just so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Absolutely. There's a beautiful relationship between the the major and the minor tonalities, but a lot of modal interchange, sure, a lot of substitutions, you know, a lot of flat sevens in there, a lot of lydian mode, which is the sharp four. You know, all of those kind of cool things come into all of these songs. I I also notice that a lot of times in some of these, they'll start the verse if it's major, they'll start it on the four chord. Yeah. You know, like that tune reminiscing does that, you know, we eventually do some back cycling. It starts in E flat, right? And then it kind of just does um this sort of they basically do two, five, two, five, two, five, and e flat. They get to D, and then that's where the song starts, and they kind of hear this like and then and then the very first chord that you get is this Friday night. I was walking alone, and the da, right? And then it goes to this beautiful dominant sharp 11. But the the the cool thing is it started on the four, it started on a G major ad nine. And and so anyway, so it goes to that four major, and that automatically lifts. I love hearing songs like that where they'll start on the four, because most people don't. They go to the four for the chorus now, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Exactly. And it's something that uh a non-producer, a non-music maker, they it's something that they really feel when they're listening to it. Yeah like it's those those moments we talked about, you and I have talked about five seconds at a time. Like it's like those five seconds of the song is like sometimes the reason somebody listens to the whole song, and it's like those moments are just so so powerful. And when you know why they're doing it, it's it's even more entertaining. But when you don't even need to know why, and you can feel it, that's just unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yep. Uh, drooling down even further, uh, great horn arrangements. There's usually a lot of ancillary stuff, and as you pointed out too, a lot of extra percussion.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Yeah, a lot of extra percussion, a lot of taps and uh bongos and things, shakers so cool, and it's it's almost like vibes me out to Big Band, where it's like they have all of these little different things, and it's like it's like Big Band condensed into like a uh palatable jazz standard. It's so it's so interesting to me that it these all got funneled to one place because they are very different songs. Um, so the percussion, the songwriting, the arrangement, the production itself, the masterful mixes and all of the uh roads forward, vocals, BGVs, all the harmonies.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Most of these tunes have incredible background vocals. Yeah, so much so that they're an integral part of the song. If you took them out, you'd be like, man, this song isn't that great anymore, right? Yeah. Uh so those to me are are really important. Also, guitar tone. It was noticeably different than the big heavy rock bands like you know, Kiss, and if we're talking late 70s, and we could talk about Van Halen and we can talk about the heavier rock stuff, you know, stuff like that. Yeah, it was the it was the classic aid. This is the this is, you know, for for guitar nerds and for people that you know want it, this is the Dumble days, right? This is this is Carlton and Rittenauer and Tedesco and those guys in LA, and Lukather, of course, and Alan Hines and Mike Landau and you know um all those Rittenauer, all those guys. They were they were all just Jay Graydon, they were all just kind of coming into that feel of like light overdrive, yeah, but it wasn't a Marshall dimed. It was this beautiful breakup point when they laid into a note, it could kind of just get a hair on it, and then after that it could kind of clean up so they could play the cool funky parts, but then when they really anyway, so every almost every solo you'll see. You know what's not though in yacht rock? Acoustic guitar.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Rarely.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Right? It's just yeah, it's very rare. It's an anomaly. It's not a normal part of of these classic songs that we would think about. Sure. It's not, it's you know, it's not uh you know, country roads from James Taylor or something.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Well, it changed it changes the entire placement and genre when you add the acoustic guitar. Yeah. So it makes the Eagles a country band, a country rock band as opposed to a yacht rock band. Like if you took the acoustic guitar out of the Eagles and put a Rhodes forward on it, it would be a yacht rock, but it would be a yacht rock band. Yeah. It'd be one of the best ones.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean imagine take it easy on a roads. Right. Yeah. You know? That's cool. I can see you're going like, yeah, what would that be like? I'm playing out of my head.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

So we we decided it like when we were talking earlier, the origin of what it uh and the components that it makes, right? I and I agree, man. I've been to so many NAMS and AES, where they do these speaker shootouts of you know, whether it's uh big line array systems, RCF Clare Brothers, all uh L Acoustic, all that, or it's monitors where they're doing shootouts of monitors, PMC, uh ATC, all of the different ones. It's like I can't tell you like a genre outside of Yacht Rock that is used more to A B speakers. It's it's that it's that masterful of production where it you can hear the little differences and variances between the different speakers because of how well they're produced.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

I I think that that was that was the next point. You're totally right on the money. I couldn't agree with you more. I think late 70s through the mid-80s was the apex of engineering, uh recording engineering process.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

And I suggested that it was closer to now where we have all of the different AIs and things like that. You were like, no, hear me out. Yeah, tell me, pitch me.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yeah, well, okay. So um we'd we'd already had everything that came through the 50s and the 60s, right? And if you think about audio quality in those times, they were very saturated. They you didn't have a lot of headroom, there wasn't a sense of hi-fi. There's no high fidelity. But holy crap, once you get into the 70s, it's all about high fidelity. The tape stock was pristine, the consoles were perfectly laid out. All every all of the audio gear had had a good 25 years to clean itself out and be pres just pristine in its nature. And if you wanted dirt and girth and whatever else that you were kind of looking for, um, you knew the kind of gear to go to to get it. But if you think about, you know, all the classic microphones and everything else, I mean, this is where everything starts to come to a head, where the engineers were finally at the point where their craft had evolved to the point where they knew how to get the best sound. You know, guys like Bill Schnee, you know, um Al Schmidt, you know, I mean, just so many. I could go down the rabbit hole about great engineers. But a lot of those guys are producing these albums that we're talking about, you know, and they they they knew how to get the best tone. Huge budget. The record company was not afraid of a quarter million dollar budget for a B-level act because they knew that they were gonna get incredible sound results. Now, how much of that actually got spent on going up people's noses, we don't know. But I'm sure a healthy amount. But nevertheless, they were able to get, you know, they could spend three days just getting drum tones.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Sure. Right? Six months writing in the studio.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

I mean, now I have to make a record in three days. You know? So it's like, okay, I can't do that. So I so you have to be way more efficient now and know your shit before you even step foot in, you need to know the studio and do the recon. But back then they could explore. They could take times and you know, take the time to go, let's pull in 15 different snares for this one song we're about to track, and then do the same thing for the next. So I think that that there was a whole process involved with it. And the engineers were just absolutely fantastic. Just Nico Bolas, you know, I mean, so uh just so many of the guys, you know, Bob Clearmountain, I mean, you know, just uh so many. Ed Cherney. I mean, if I I can just keep going. Um Tony Visconti, you know what I mean? Frank Filipetti, I mean just everybody. So amazing. So I think that that we had this nexus point where um the the the musicianship was extremely high. The arrangements were extremely high, the studios were dialed in, and the engineers behind those consoles knew exactly what they were going for. And that is a perfect recipe.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Right? I mean, we're looking at the era that we already kind of said, it's like 1970, what was it, 78 to 84? Yeah. And then we have kind of the death, and we go into post-diot. But before we get into any of that, I want to talk more about who was making the music. Yeah. Right. So obviously you have a Christopher Cross record over there. Oh yeah. If you pull that record. That's my OG. You pull that record and you read the back of it. Yeah. To see who's on it. Why don't you give give us a taste? Tell tell us who played on this record.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Sure. Okay. So um you have Tommy Taylor on drums, you have Rob Moore on keyboards, you got Larry Carlton on guitar, you have Lenny Castro on percussion, Victor Fellman on percussion, Chuck Finley on trumpet, Jay Graden on guitar, you have Eric Johnson on guitar, you have Don Henley as background vocals, Jim Horn on saxophone, um, you've got Nicolette Larson on background vocals, you have um splouches. I mean, the worst ones are are Michael McDonald, you know. Um right? I mean, there's just there's so many. I mean J.D. Southern you know, now Chris is a little bit of a weird example though, because he was a Texas boy.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Well.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

And so um not California. No. And when we're thinking about Yacht Rock, we need to we need to acknowledge that there's two epicenters. He was the outlier. This was an Austin contingent that he brought in to make this happen, right? He was but he was a Texas boy. Um but if you think m most of it stemmed from East Coast Yacht Rock is gonna be Steely Dan primarily. And then if we had to have one sort of representative from West Coast, who would you pick? The Doogie brothers. Yeah. Or you'd or you'd or to or Toto. Or Toto. Right? Either one. You know? And I and I wouldn't really, you know, I love Steve Lukathur. Um I have the same birthday, strangely. Really? Yeah. But um that doesn't mean I can't play guitar like he can. Um but who can? Yeah, he's such, he's amazing. He really is. But the the but the the the cool thing about all this is um in LA, a lot of these guys were moonlighting on so many thousands of recordings. And I think that that's what drove all of these songs from B-level, you know, sort of um one-hit wonders, so to speak, but they were really solid bands like Ambrosia, you know what I mean, or what they if you look at the guys in the band, you're gonna find that, you know, you're gonna find the that Lukuther may have played guitar on this, and then it spanned out, right, as we got further into the 80s, even into 83 with with Thriller, right? It's basically Toto being the backup band for Thriller.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

I haven't mentioned, I thought Thriller was kind of a yacht-rot record.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

I can't go there.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

I know you can't, but it's it almost it's it's soul. And we we'll talk about the the you know what the genre actually is. But so Doobie Brothers, obviously, Michael McDonald's such huge uh I mean he's he's kind of like the godfather of Yacht Rock, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:32

If you were to say who's the captain, um I think he's the godfather of white soul.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Just blue-eyed soul is what they called it.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yeah, right. I mean, it's soul, and he's just so god, he's amazing. Yeah. One of the greatest singers, you know, out there ever. So yeah, I mean, but the the the temperament that he was able to bring um, you know, to like what a fool believes or you know, um minute by minute, or some of those classic, you know, the especially off that album, um taking it to the streets, even, you know, which has still got a little bit of the old doobie brothers, you know, the jam rock band. Um but god man, I mean, or I keep forgetting, you know, I keep forgetting, I'm not in loving anymore. That one's pretty good McDonald's.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

You know what I mean? Everybody has uh has tried to do a Michael McDonald's.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Everybody and it because it's such a tribute. Yeah. You know what I mean? His style like no one ever goes, he's such a bad singer. No one ever makes fun of Michael McDonald in that way. No. You they you you when you do a Michael McDonald impression, you're doing like this guy's such a badass, I'm just gonna try to imitate it. It's like people doing Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles. Right. It's n it's never in a pejorative sense. Yeah. It's a hundred percent glow.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Yeah. So the sincerest form of flattery.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

I think in the truest way. Yeah. Yeah, there's no like, you know, barb in there. Uh it's it's real.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

I always love the the SCTV episode when they're recording Ride Like the Wind, and you see Rick Morance playing playing Michael McDonald. You see him cruising in the car trying to get to the studio, he gets in right in time, right on bead, walks into the recording studio, sings the line, walks out of the recording studio, picks watch, shakes his hand. Yeah. It's so funny. Um, if you care about your sound, you can't ignore the most critical link in your signal chain, your cable. Astrobe cables are engineered using advanced materials, precision geometry, and disciplined manufacturing to preserve your tone, reduce noise, and deliver unmatched clarity. Designed and built in the USA, they're trusted by professional musicians, producers, and engineers around the world. From the studio to the stage, Astrobe helps your signal arrive intact. Rich, detailed, and true to its source. Don't just play. Be heard the way that you're meant to. Upgrade your sound at Astrope.com. Astrope, better signal, better sound.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

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SPEAKER_01 26:07

What do you think the most famous of the genre are? What are the tracks that really, if someone were to say, I like yacht rock, you know, what are the what are their three songs in their head that they're thinking about?

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Okay, three songs that for me, my top three that would define it.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

I'm probably gonna agree with you, so let's just call it the top.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Okay, first, Christopher Cross Sailing.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Sailing.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

We're gonna hit all the coasts. So we got Texas. Texas, that's then we got, yeah, then we're gonna have then we're gonna have Hey 19, Steely Dance. Yep, and then What a Fool Believes. What a Fool Believes. From the Doobies. That would be probably the three that I think most people go, oh yeah, that's what Yacht Rock is.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Sure. And they're pretty different tracks, to be honest. I mean, when you look when you listen to them, uh Christopher Cross sailing guitar forward. I remember the video of him playing that double-necked Stratocaster. Yeah, it was 12 string on top, 12 string on top, six on the bottom.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Uh it's the only time I believe that I've ever seen a double neck Stratocaster. It's an odd guitar. Usually you see the SG as a double neck.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Some uh knockoff.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

But I mean, think about that. I mean, he was he was coming, he was coming into this whole thing, self-financing his demos from selling weed. Right. Right? It was super profitable. And then he that's what he said himself. I know, that was the funniest. Right? And he took his he took his money, plowed it back in, got some studio gear, and made started making records. But uh, but when that record came out, uh you know, I say that record, it's it's this record. Yeah right, when this record came out, it won five Grammys, including Artist of the Year.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

And Best New Artist.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, Best New Artist. Yeah. And and and on it, you know, you have um you have Ride Like the Wind and you have Sailing on it, which are two of his biggest hits, period.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

And two of the biggest in the genre.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Yeah, Ride Like the Wind.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Yeah. But uh but I mean, there's so many great songs because I mean yacht rock is you know, it's sort of like no one really knows what it is. I think you asked the right question, which is like, is it a genre? Is it really? Or is it a joke? I don't think it's a joke.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Right?

SPEAKER_00 28:20

I don't know. I don't know. You know, it's like I don't think it's a joke. Because I don't think people are making fun of the music. The music is fantastic. It's some of the best songs. People still love listening to it. Uh and I I I mean, I remember I used to play uh I used to play bass back in this um in a i I was in a gospel band back in church, you know, back in Dallas. And I just remember this is this is not this is on the other side of of Dallas for me. I didn't grow up in South Dallas, I was sort of in that sort of central Dallas, you know, kind of and uh but but going down to Oak Cliff, which is predominantly uh African American and getting to hang with with my buddies down there and we could play music, uh man, anytime, you know, minute by minute came on or whatever, they were grooving hard to it. You know, they loved it. I mean it was the same thing. I say they, we, you know, we all loved it. But just in the same token, you know, if Teddy Pendergrass came on, you know, looks like another love, TKO. You know what I mean? I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, you know that that's my bad Teddy. Um I'm not even in the right key. But but you know what I'm saying? Like, I I'd hear that stuff and I'm like, oh yeah, man. If I could sing like one guy a sidebar, that's that's my that's my guy. Teddy. I'd want to sing like Teddy Pendergrass. I'd lay it, he could sing. Oh, sure. I'm probably not. Probably not. He was so good.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

So and you you mentioned it again, like I said earlier, it's like it's it's not really a genre, right? We it's a descriptor, in a way, of a feeling that the music makes.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

And of this little narrow window of time. Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

It's a very short window of time. Yeah. How many songs are there? A few hundred, probably, maybe a thousand tops.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

And you know, um we talked about genre as it being a genre. There's genres uh was an organic thing that evolved to be able to put things into compartments to sell records, right? So you could be able to put, you know, you go to the record store and there's heavy metal, and there's there's you know, classic rock, soul, yeah, country, yeah. Um descriptors, right? And then it gets a little wild when he was started looking at metal and seeing the amount of different genres that have spawned in metal. Um, one of the craziest lists I've ever read. Um, and it just went on forever. Yeah. But I don't really see it as a genre, I see it as a as a feeling, right? It's kind of a descriptor of the feeling that you get the California air, cruising on the boat, it's very chill. It's like if you were cruising in a yacht, it seems very appropriate, right? It's the appropriate music in a way.

SPEAKER_04 31:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

I but it did die. It was a very short period of time.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah, I think taste changed. But okay, so if we want to go into so this is our kind of our, you know, the narrative that I think we're kind of landing on in a way of like, how do we how do we make sense of this in a historical perspective and um on that timeline? 78 to 84. Yeah, I think is it's kind of that that's the that's the bookends, at least for me. Right. Um I don't want to speak for you.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Well, we looked for the billboard, right? We looked sort of to see where popularity was.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Yeah, yeah. And you know, because uh think of those classic songs, like let's just look at the classic songs from Steely Dan. You know, you've got you've got Peg, you've got Hey 19, you've got Deacon Blue, right? But those at the end of 78, that was the first time that Steely Dan was on the charts. Right. You know, and then the next time they were on, it was back in 80. Well, 80 is is this. Right. Right? This is 1980. And so um and then you think about the Doobie brothers, same thing, right? They're coming in uh so it's it's like this weird thing that just starts to happen and they all these songs go really well together. But I I I think musically the reason why they all fit together makes more sense of calling it a genre than uh a commercial-based sort of artifice that we tack onto it and go, well, this is yacht rock, and it'll fit in Tower Records or Amoeba or Peaches or, you know, all the great old record stores that are no longer in existence.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Well, it was the capitalist to me is the the the capitalism behind the record industry is what killed the genre of music, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_04 32:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Uh when once we got to 1984, 85, it was more about creating as much quantity of music as you could. And once you know, there's an inflection point of when you create more and more and more of something, the odds are that a larger percentage is going to suck. Yeah. Right. So when I look at you know, the mid-80s, as we were, as we were seeing more records being sold, the advent of MTV being a vehicle for advertising record sales, and you know, all of a sudden Donald Fagan's mug is on TV, and they're like, and the little girls didn't want to go buy a Donald Fagan Steely Dan CD, right? Or Christopher Cross, which some say that his career just got destroyed by MTV by him being on there.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

And so as the the engine grows and keeps going, selling more records, then you start to get the dilution of styles. Yeah. Right. I pointed out to you, uh, Billy Ocean, nothing bad about Caribbean Queen. Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Great, great song.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

It sounds like a yacht rock track, but it doesn't sound like yacht rock, it sounds stale. We were calling it post-yacht earlier. Uh like post-rock.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Post post-nautical.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Post-nautical, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Uh yeah, post-nautical rock. Yeah, I I think, you know, kind of to your point um on that, when you when you think about it, for me, what makes sense is also thinking of this, because we have this apex of American analog recording, but in 83, MIDI comes out. And as we get into 84, you you have bands that are immediately adopting um grid-locked, synced to, you know, to simpty time code um types of technology, right? You had ZZ Top coming out with Afterburner with Sharp Dressed Man, and I mean, that's a long way away from Lagrange and I'm bad nationwide. I mean, those are deep, cool ass tracks. But now Z Z Top, boom, and then MTV comes out, huge explosion with sharp-dressed man and everything else, right? So uh but then you had all the new wave, you had, you know, that were coming in hot and heavy, um Duran Duran, Culture Club, Wham, you know, you had all of this stuff. And then you had the edgy stuff, and of course all the other stuff, which was more my forte. Uh but you had you too, and you had some other things that were kind of coming in. But th Prince. But the things the things start to to change technologically, I think, where things start moving in the in this gridded drum machine stuff. And not to be discounted, you had the real first breakthrough in sort of that later 80s side, you know, of hip-hop. And that whole emergence, which devalued the whole concept of a band because it was coming from a community that bands weren't part of that that scene, that wasn't part of the DJ scene. And the emergence of the DJ and the sampler and the drum machines and all the other stuff, which would be a great episode to talk about too. Um I mean, I love all that stuff, but that is a whole different type of thing. So here we are going up, and then all of a sudden it just happened to coincide with MIDI and time, you know, time grids and SIMT time codes and drum machines and everything else, and then we just start to have this, you know, precipitous rate of fall.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Yeah, and it's a it's it's the machine, right? It's like uh the the music when it becomes a music machine, you lose the feel. And like yacht rock is the best at holding on to feeling, right? Again, not a genre, more of a feeling that you have listening to the music. And uh I think you lose a lot of that as you use more technology. When we were filming the last episode, I think it came up quite a bit when talking about artificial intelligence and what that's done to the making music stale and making it not feel human and making it more robotic. And I think our first probably entry into that, the first time that that showed up was in 1984, appropriately, and uh the downfall then. And then also Kenny Loggins started making soundtracks. The second he went into making Top Gun and Footloops, yeah, it was like he was like, All right, I'm I'm out. Candy shack. I'm gonna go do rock, I'll see you, I'm gonna go do some soundtracks, I'll see you, yacht rock. Yeah, and then I think you just started having some exits from that that really beautiful landscape that we have.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

And you know, the weird thing about Kenny Loggins is is he's an amazing artist, he's an amazing singer, he's an incredible songwriter. Yeah you know, so no genre's gonna last forever. So it's it's unreasonable for us to think like, because they I was thinking while you were talking about, I was like, what if the genre never died? You know, what if what if there was still yacht rock that was going on? I mean, yeah, there's throwbacks and there's people that are paying tribute to it, and of course, lovely, and they should. But I mean, like, what's cool, what's cool about that? I mean, it couldn't have gone on forever. It was gonna have to just die off at some point, as that I think what genres are are part of the psychology of humanity where we need a a schema. We need we need a framework, we need a a hook to hang the coat on, right? And whatever that hook is, is is where we place the coat. So we can't go in to listening to music and go, I have no frame of reference, right? We have to have it because that's how we differentiate, well, this is a little bit different from what you already know. Here's here's a hamburger, but in this case it's wagyu beef, but we already we went ahead and mixed Serrano and some jalapenos into the patty along with garlic. Then it's a little bit different, right? Or you do this special secret sauce, whatever it is. I think that that's where we come up with with this, you know, where we we were able to interpret. So when someone says yacht rock, it's a real shorthand of literacy, cultural literacy, where we can go, okay, cool. You just eliminated uh 10,000 different bands. Now we're talking about about 50 different artists in this in from this one particular time period.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

That's an interesting uh concept in like the cultural literacy of it all, right? That's uh yeah, that's a very interesting uh way to articulate that, Brian.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

Well, I I thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

Uh so what is I mean, so now we're seeing we see a resurgence, right? There's a lot of uh essentials. We obviously we have a playlist that's in the in the description uh of the video.

unknown 39:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Um where is it? Are we gonna get some reunion tours? I mean, I feel like the last couple of years, and maybe the maybe COVID had something to do with people digging back into catalogs of music and seeing uh, you know, and trying to discover things or rediscover. I mean, I I'll tell you that I never really listened to Steely Dan until I was in my late 30s. Yeah, you know, so I think there's a a rediscovery that happened along with the kind of the humor around what the name of the genre is because it is still, to me, kind of funny. Yeah, it's the name's funny. So what's next? Are we gonna get is there reunion tours that you think are possible or like where I I I just saw this that documentary about Yacht Rock, and it seems everybody seems a lot of people seem pretty healthy. They look to be Yeah, they could still do it.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Well, I mean, Steely Dan did, you know, to when they when they did, you know, the the reunion album, you know, and they sort of came up with that and got back together and and were touring. I think so. Yeah, you know what I mean? And then they were touring, so they they did some of that. Um, you know, Michael McDonald's just done his own thing. He doesn't need to go back to the Doobie Brothers, but you know, if they got back together, I mean they'd have a multi-generational show. But it would that be any different than uh than uh a Pink Floyd show or an Aerosmith concert or a U2 show now?

SPEAKER_01 40:36

I I mean Pink Floyd, yes, because I just think that they would still want to kill each other. But uh outside of them.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

Okay, true. Bad example, yeah. Gilmore and W Roger Waters are are oil and and water in that sense. Um yeah. But like you know what I mean, like it you got multi-generational stuff. But here's the thing, if the Beastie Boys were still together, right, or if Run DMC wanted to do a thing, I'm just thinking of anything from this time period, um, Sugar Hill Gang, you know, any of that, cool in the gang, Earth, Wind, and Fire, if they wanted to put a reunion tour together, you're gonna get more you're gonna get three generations of people there. Yeah. Right? What about a cruise? A yacht rock. Well, okay, so this No, I'm with you. This this is the this is when it is a genre, right? If you're and you're having it. But the weird thing is, you're not having the Doobie brothers, you're having these rock cruises, you know what I mean? Where people go right, where they go in and they they see kiss, they see poison. They see it it is, yeah, right. It is. It's like, yeah, it is. It's a literal yacht rock instead of what you would think of. So again, uh to our point, and I think I I totally agree with you, it's not a genre. It's just a it's a cultural shorthand to to nail down a very specific playlist, if you will, of possibilities.

SPEAKER_01 41:55

And I think it's really cool that it exists.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

I do too.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

And I can't think of another example of something that formed a music collective out of a humorous, out of humor videos in 2005, which is 30, 20 years after the genre kind of died.

SPEAKER_04 42:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Like, what an interesting place to be, right? So we called it Blue Eyed Soul, I believe, was coined in Rolling Stone a few years back. But I I was thinking that it's kind of universal soul music. Yeah. When I think about the bands that fall into the yacht rock genre. So can we rename it or do we keep yacht rock?

SPEAKER_00 42:33

I I think we I think you know the milk spilled. You know, let's just let's let's acknowledge it and say, yeah, let's keep it. Yacht rock. It's totally fine because we know what the parameters are in our mind. Yeah, you know, so if that helps us come to a mutual understanding when we're talking about music, bring it on.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

You know, Donald Fagan hears this this conversation so he cannot be upset that something was that he falls into something that's so beloved by so many.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

Oh man, I mean, yeah, I don't think of Steely Dan as yacht rock. I don't. I think of them as Steely Dan, you know, and I don't know what that is.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

They're kind of genre list. Well I mean, there's so much going on.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

And and that's been a huge influence on the way that I write when I'm not writing classical and jazz. Um, when I'm doing like magicals from mongrels, it's the same thing. Like that music is kind of hard to pin down.

SPEAKER_04 43:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

Because I'm just cramming a whole bunch of cool stuff in there that I think is fun. And I think that that's where they were from because they they had the, you know, they were staff writers, Becker and Fagan, right? And here they are, they're writing these songs that were so individual to them uh and idiosyncratic that they couldn't shop it to a Gino Vinelli or to a Barry Manilow or to a Neil Diamond. Like they wouldn't cut these songs. You imagine if Barry Manilo did Deacon Blues. You know? It's a different timeline. Maybe you could have right. Maybe AI can do that for us, you know. Oh, that's like a rabbit hole. But I mean, you know what I mean? It would just be weird. Enkelbert Humperdink does, you know, Hey 19. You know, it's different. And I and they all had their different stuff. I mean, uh, just for the record, if we were going to debate it, you know, like Steely Dan, just to kind of on your point of how much I I love, you know, Steely Dan and Fagan's work and everything. I mean, I loved uh I loved the nightfly, which was his, you know, and I loved all of his other, you know, solo records too. Um but I think that with with that, you know, the if you look at the themes of Steely Dan lyrically, subject matter-wise, it's creepy. It's the creepy older guy that dates the young, you know, hot girl, and she's and she's she's got weird friends, and he doesn't really know because they're embarrassing him, right? Or he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to be labeled as a as a pedo, you know, or whatever. It's like there's a there's an element of snarky, irreverent, um, just kind of, you know, a big fuck you to the society norms of it, right? And it has this undertone of of of uh of um sexuality to it that's deviant in nature and a lot of substance abuse. Like my favorite album from Steely Dan, um, most people think well it'd be Age, or it's not it's it's actually Gaucho. Gaucho is my favorite album. But all of those, if you listen to the lyrics on all of that, it's not good. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's not good. Um, the lyrics are not good. So they were masters at being able to present a very complex subject matter with some edgy, questionable, uh, you know, ethical choices, and put it in such a beautiful way that you were like, this song is so cool. I love everything about it.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

It's like Epstein cringe rock.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Right. Yeah. Wow. That might be too hard, but yeah, you're in the you're in the right ballpark. But if you think about Michael McDonald, it's very in Kenny Loggins, beautiful, open. Um, it's a it's a true love story. It's like, you know, what a fool believes. He's talking about how some guy didn't get it or why someone left, you know, little riverbed. Have you heard about the launch and loser beaten by the queen of hearts every time, right? You know what I mean? It's like that kind of cool stuff. And and when you listen to that, you just go, yeah, there's no like, ooh, this is eerie, this is dark, there's no edge, it's just beautiful, right? And it's and it's I so I like that, and I think that that's where and Christopher Cross was the same way too. You know, I mean, sailing, you know, ride like the wind, everything else, even Arthur's theme, right? You remember that.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

Uh very in touch with their uh with their feelings and emotions.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

Yeah, there's no creep factor, there's no ick involved in that. Steely Dan wasn't afraid to walk in those shoes.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

You know, and I love that about Fagan. That speaks so close to my heart.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Yeah, you know. It's gritty, man.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

It is, and I love that. I love the grit.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

Yeah, yeah. So unusual for them to be classified in yacht rock when you really listen to it.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

I think that's why he told the guy to go fuck himself.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

Like I'm not that.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

Yeah, because he's like, it's yacht rock. Like I'm talking about, you know, I'm talking about hanging out with basketball players, you know, doing cocaine, you know, like I mean, you know, glamour for profession, you know, or departure. Yeah, time out of mind, you know, heroin, the whole thing, you know. Like, yeah, I mean, that's dark stuff, and it's and I think it's meant to be a lesson. But when you look at Kenny Loggins, you know, and this is it Magnum Mustang, where you are, you know, that one. Um dude, I mean, that's just it is what it says it is.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Right on. I think it's a good time to put a pen in the episode for this week. Uh awesome stuff as usual, great conversation. Yeah, look forward to a bunch of a bunch of more episodes that we're filming in the next few weeks. We can put them out over uh hopefully weekly. We're looking at try to stay consistent for everybody. Um, and then hang out for a little bit. We're gonna take apart the theme song again.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

Yeah, so what we did, so unlike episode one where we we created earworm, and it was in that sort of you know, crazy rock genre, we we actually redid it in uh in an AI version of it where we tried to get it to do as close to yacht rock with a lot of prompts that we were able to massage in there. Finally, so we got different versions of it, and we can take that apart and uh and and see if they've nailed the main components genre-wise, if it was.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

Yeah, yeah, we'll keep doing it. All right, here we're out. Last week we had an episode about artificial intelligence, and we are questioning the intelligence of all of it. We made our logo, we made our theme song. We kind of wanted to lean into it a little bit more because we were having so much fun with the topic. So, Brian, what do we do here? I think we should keep doing this every episode just to see how far we can break it. I like that idea. Okay, so next one.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

So the prompt was essentially can we take the theme song from last week, which was kind of like prog rock, and can we make it into yacht rock this time? And it basically sounds like bad Billy Ocean. Bad Billy Ocean. I think so. I think it's bad Billy Ocean. So I'll take it, we'll take it apart and we'll talk about uh edit right here. So we'll take it apart and we're going to show you why the intelligence is not up to speed with uh a great arrangement. But let's play a little bit of it. Here's the intro. This is uh we'll post it up on the playlist as well. We'll give them this. Um it's like a minute and 33 seconds long. It's not long, but go ahead, hit the space bar.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

Here we're doing it. Yeah, it definitely got the bobby.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

Yeah, David said the same thing. Our our off-camera genius who's helping to edit the show, uh, he said the same thing. It's in the Bobby Kimball temperature territory. I agree, I totally agree. Um, yeah. So, okay. Um boring. Yeah, it's very generic. I mean, that's about as generic as you can get. That's like, I don't even think that would make like a you know, like a uh an 1989 ABC sitcom on a non-Thursday night.

SPEAKER_01 51:29

I don't even think that would make a Chevrolet truck commercial.

SPEAKER_00 51:33

What about a Ford?

SPEAKER_01 51:34

Maybe a Ford. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_00 51:35

You know, no, I mean it's you know, there were different ad campaigns.

SPEAKER_01 51:39

Maybe it should be a Tesla commercial.

SPEAKER_00 51:41

I mean, Chevy at least had the sense enough to get Bob Seeker to do like a rock. What did Ford get? Didn't they do Toby Keith for a while? Probably a bad choice for it.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

I think Elon would probably approve of the AI. We could do a Tesla commercial.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

Ooh, that would be good. That'd be hilarious. Yeah, so that's our theme song. We're gonna pose it for you because there's some funny lyrics in there. I think our I think our new tradition should be we'll either make something from scratch ourselves and then compare it if we have time uh in our busy work weeks, or we'll just keep breaking AI and keep rewriting lyrics specific for each show.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

Yeah, so we can go further down the drain.

SPEAKER_00 52:18

Yes, circles exactly. Keep circling it all. But it's pretty, you know, it's it's it's very basic stuff. It sounds like bad Billy Ocean, you know. Especially with the horns and the sound of the snare, super gated snare, which is period correct for late, you know, for that kind of mid to late 80s thing, which is a little post post-acht rock.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

It's still so eerie, the whole uh Suno making music in general. It's so eerie, and it's just so eerie. Um, it was interesting to watch you break down the tracks last week uh in the software and then be able to do an edit for like that really kind of clicked and like it made sense. I was like, okay, I can see somebody engineering like a commercial ad or something like that through this kind of generation, but at the same time, it's taking taking jobs away from people that are doing it, but then we're helping.

SPEAKER_00 53:08

Well, but you asked a good question, like, is this a positive or a negative? I think we kind of landed on like the last I I haven't changed my opinion yet. I still think pro side is it's fun for people who aren't musicians. Yeah, and they I mean, like, think about it. The next time your relatives come for Thanksgiving, make a make a special song in in this type of software where it totally talks about your relatives by name. Yeah, you know, that kind of fun stuff. And you can do it in any style that they think would be hip, you know? Put it in the cruder style, put it in a 50s doo-op, do a 60s psychedelic rock. You know, you just pick your genre. That's fun. It's novelty though.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

It is.

SPEAKER_00 53:50

You know what I mean? It's it's like remember going down to like Destin, Florida, I do it in the 70s, and I would buy like a kiss shirt, and on the back, they'd like airbrush your name. That's kind of what this is like for me.

SPEAKER_01 54:01

This is it's about that cheesy. It's the airbrushed beach vacation t-shirt of software.

SPEAKER_00 54:07

Don't you think? Of music. Yeah, I think that's kind of what it's about. Now, in six months, we could be having a very different conversation. True.

SPEAKER_01 54:15

So we'll monitor it for you.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So stay tuned.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

Right on. Get the hot air.