Shameless Pleasures #2 - Yacht Rock
- tortolano5
- Apr 11
- 4 min read
My next Shameless Pleasure is “Yacht Rock”! Have you heard of it? It’s a style of music that dominated the FM airwaves in the early 70s and 80s. You know it when you hear it and you can’t help but sing along, knowing every word!
The term yacht rock emerged in 2005 when a LA based comedy group created a web series called yacht rock apparently. Who knew, I feel like I just discovered the term for my shame over the last few years.
The music is smooth and polished with electric pianos and lovely melodies sung often by men with high voices. It’s the sound that makes you think of floating gently on some body of water without a care in the world.
Think The Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Christopher Cross, Hall & Oates. But not Jimmy Buffet. Apparently his sound doesn’t meet the smooth yacht feeling. His is more of a high energy party boat vibe – not the same thing.
I may not admit freely to everyone that I LOVE yacht rock. It’s the music I turn to when I am alone in the car and the need to belt out a song just consumes me.
Its really quite embarrassing and I am glad no one is with me when I am singing alone – its not pretty! Well, I am not a bad singer but the rest of the performance, lets just say is a little over the top.
I am exposing this pleasure now because happily Sirius XM just activated their Yacht Rock station for the lead up to summer fun! If you are on Sirius it’s station 15! And it’s already programmed in my car’s favorites for the season. I am hoping for some good car time!
One of the reasons I love yacht rock so much is that it brings me back to good memories. It’s those songs that you may not have really understood as a kid listening to but you just felt something. And for me, each song evokes a feeling, a memory, or a person.
Let me share two fond memories I have of Yacht Rock with you.
The first was when I visited Smith Mountain Lake for a girl’s weekend. One of my oldest Virginia friends, Sandy, and her husband, have a lovely condo and boat on the lake and I have had the privilege of visiting there on many occasions. This particular memory though is of the girls weekend and about the after hours party at the condo.
Sandy and I headed back after quite a few lakeside cocktails but weren’t ready to call it a night. So we put on the TV intending to watch a movie but what do we stumble upon instead? You got it – a yacht rock infomercial. It was to buy a complete collection of soft rock CDs that covered the whole of the 70s and 80s. There were like 30 CDs or something. The informercial though was playing the old songs like a juke box and each one Sandy and I belted out like no one was watching – or listening. Except probably her neighbors, sorry folks we were feeling it.
When the rest of the gang came home, Sandy and I tried to convince everyone to go in on the collection with us – we had no takers. Good thing because we can stream anything now and I am not even sure I have any way to play the CDS!
We still laugh about this today!
My next memory is more recent from 2024 when my husband and I visited our friends in Asheville, NC. This was before Hurricane Helene’s massive flooding and before Asheville was decimated. Our friends didn’t lose their home but know many who did.
Well on that trip, Tracey and I (yep her name is Tracey too) decided it’d be fun to go to the “Thurston Howell Yacht Rock Spectacular” at the Salvage Station in Asheville. The husbands were not super keen on the idea but humored us. They like good music too.
What an experience! It was like we traveled back in time and were hob knobbing with the cast from Gilligan’s Island. People dressed the part too. I never saw so many scarfs on men before and white – oh white suits everywhere. While the music was amazing, the event was a tiny bit over the top for me – I like my yacht rock in private I guess!
This memory sticks with me because this favorite place of our friend’s is no longer open for business because of the hurricane. So, when I hear yacht rock, I travel to that memory in my mind and think about all those people who went out and I mean all out to have a good time. I hope that wherever they are now they are finding ways to keep singing those smooth melodies and do it shamelessly.
I really do hope that the Salvage Station can open again in the future. Here is a link in case you want to check it out and donate to help them get back on their feet: https://salvagestation.com/
And if you wanna hear the Thurston Howell Band near you, I added a link to their summer schedule in the post. https://www.thurstonhowellband.com/#portsofcall
Finally, to hear the best yacht rock song ever song: SAILING by Christopher Cross:
And remember, life’s too short to feel guilty about the things we love!
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