“A fucking joke”: Why Daryl Hall hates the term “yacht rock”
I’ll hold my hands up and admit, I, like the rest of my millennial compatriots, am a sucker for a good meme. Generally speaking, the internet fosters more toxicity than positivity, but within its realms of hatred are nuggets of comedy that reaffirm my faith in our ability to parody our lives. Within that culture, the world of “yacht rock” has become the latest cannon fodder.
It’s been used as a soundtrack to pigeonhole a demographic of fans, usually inoffensive, most likely golf players with a penchant for retro-fit polo shirts. It’s the smooth tones of understated jazz and rock that have become its soundtrack.
It’s as reductive as a title as say “hair-rock”, which is simply derived from the aesthetics of the artists who would perform, but in the case of “yacht-rock”, it’s far more arbitrary. There’s something within the smooth feel of the music that seemingly feels fitting to the landscape of a luxurious yacht rather than the grungey back room of a sweaty venue.
And whether they like it or not, like hair-rock, there’s something within the aesthetics of the artists that lends itself to the title. The lightly combed hair of The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan and Hall & Oates feels custom-designed for the sweeping winds of a harbour patrolling superyacht.
Understandably, it’s the kernel of that idea that upsets Daryl Hall in particular who said, “This is something I don’t understand. First of all, yacht rock was a fucking joke by two jerk offs in California and suddenly it became a genre,” he said. “I don’t even understand it. I never understood it.”
In his continued attack on the label, Hall tried to get to the bottom of it by stating, “It’s just R&B, with maybe some jazz in there. It’s mellow R&B, smooth R&B.” He continued “I don’t see what the yacht part is.”
Without knowing it, he put his finger on it within that very sentence. It’s the smoothness of the genre that has inspired the yacht connotation, an idea that the well presented arrangement and tones of their music feels linked to a wealthier life altogether.
But Hall’s feelings speak to a much wider issue within the labelling of music generally. He said, “People misjudged us because they couldn’t label us,” adding, “They always came up with all this kind of crap, soft rock and yacht rock and all this other nonsense,” he said. “And none of it, none of it really describes anything that I do really.”
While genres are largely a necessary evil, helping us dial in our taste range to further explore specific realms of music we may like, they equally limit the lifespan of an artist. For really, they only serve a purpose to the audience, as truly great artists don’t approach a studio session with the purpose of exploring a hyper-specified subgenre. And nor should they, for the true essence of sonic brilliance is a pursuit of innovation and difference that the boundaries of a genre seek to temper.
