Best Yacht Rock Songs
Yacht rock is soft rock made roughly between 1976 and 1984 by session-grade musicians: clean production, jazz chords, and no distortion anywhere. Steely Dan's "Peg", the Michael McDonald-era Doobie Brothers, Christopher Cross's "Sailing" and Toto's "Rosanna" are the canon.
The genre was named retroactively by a 2005 web series, which is why its edges are still argued over. This list sticks to the tracks nobody would throw overboard.
If you only play one
Steely Dan - Peg (1977)
Three minutes that contain the whole genre: session players, jazz chords, a hook auditioned to death, and not a distorted sound anywhere.
- 01
Steely Dan - Peg
1977
Seven guitarists were tried before Jay Graydon's solo made the cut. That level of obsession over one eight-bar passage is what the genre is.
- 02
The Doobie Brothers - What a Fool Believes
1978
The most yacht rock song ever recorded, and the one everyone agrees on. The keyboard figure is doing a job normally given to a bassline.
- 03
Christopher Cross - Sailing
1979
Literal enough to be the genre's namesake and good enough that the joke never stuck to it. Won Record of the Year, which nobody remembers.
- 04
Toto - Rosanna
1982
Jeff Porcaro's half-time shuffle is the most copied drum pattern of the decade. Everything else on the track is arranged around leaving it room.
- 05
Michael McDonald - I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)
1982
The voice the whole genre is measured against, over a bassline Warren G later built a career on. Two eras, one groove.
- 06
Kenny Loggins - This Is It
1979
Co-written with McDonald, which is effectively a certificate of authenticity. Loggins spent the next decade making the opposite kind of record.
- 07
Hall & Oates - I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)
1981
A drum machine and almost nothing else for the first minute. Proof the genre was never soft as a limitation, only as a choice.
- 08
Boz Scaggs - Lowdown
1976
The record that assembled the players who would go on to form Toto. Everything the genre became is already in this arrangement.
- 09
Bobby Caldwell - What You Won't Do for Love
1978
The horn line is one of the most sampled in hip-hop, which is how a soft rock record ended up underpinning half of the 90s.
- 10
Player - Baby Come Back
1977
The purest pop song here. Two chords of tension in the verse, complete release in the chorus, no ideas above its station.
- 11
Ambrosia - Biggest Part of Me
1980
A prog band who reinvented themselves as a soft rock act and did it better than the bands who had always been one.
- 12
Robbie Dupree - Steal Away
1980
Close enough to "What a Fool Believes" that it drew a lawsuit. Included precisely because the genre's ceiling and its imitations sit this close together.
- 13
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
1978
The saxophone that launched a thousand arguments about whether this counts. It does: the production is immaculate and nothing is in a hurry.
- 14
George Benson - Give Me the Night
1980
Quincy Jones producing a jazz guitarist as a pop singer. The bridge between yacht rock and the disco records that were supposedly its opposite.
- 15
Al Jarreau - Mornin'
1983
A jazz vocalist making unapologetic adult pop. The vocal arrangement in the last chorus is more complex than anything else on this list.
Settle it properly
Lists are one person's opinion. Put the same question to your friends instead. Everyone submits their answer to
"Yacht Rock"
and the room votes blind on whose pick was best. Free, no account, about four minutes.
Start the BattleWhat actually counts as yacht rock
The working definition is narrow: American, roughly 1976 to 1984, made by studio musicians, harmonically closer to jazz than to rock, and produced with obsessive cleanliness. Distortion, aggression and rough edges disqualify a record instantly.
The other test is personnel. A remarkably small group of players (Porcaro, McDonald, Graydon, the Steely Dan session pool) appear across most of the canon, which is why the records sound related despite coming from different bands.
This is also why the edges are contested. "Baker Street" is British, Hall & Oates are closer to Philly soul, and neither would pass a strict reading. Both feel right, and feel is what the genre was named on.
Why it came back
The name was invented in 2005 by a comedy web series, so the genre spent its first years as a joke about soft rock and boat shoes. What kept it alive was that the joke did not survive contact with the records.
Hip-hop had already been mining the same catalogue for a decade. Warren G built "Regulate" on Michael McDonald, and once producers were sampling this music seriously, the case for it as craft rather than kitsch made itself.
The current revival is largely about production. In an era of loud, compressed masters, records mixed to sound expensive and unhurried land as a genuine relief, which is a better reason to listen than nostalgia.
Best Yacht Rock Songs, answered
What is yacht rock?
Smooth, jazz-inflected soft rock made mostly in Los Angeles between about 1976 and 1984, characterised by clean production, session-musician precision and complex chords. The term was coined retroactively in 2005 by a web series, not by the artists.
Is Toto yacht rock?
Yes, and "Rosanna" is one of the defining tracks. The band formed out of the session players on Boz Scaggs's Silk Degrees, which is close to the genre's point of origin. "Africa" is the bigger song and the less typical one.
What is the most yacht rock song ever?
The Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes" (1978). It scores on every criterion: Michael McDonald on vocals, jazz harmony, immaculate production and no rock aggression anywhere in the arrangement.
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