How can a song dedicated to Rosanna Arquette not be a bona fide Yacht Rock staple? Well, actually, we'll get to that bit of popular misinformation in a second. Yet another Los Angeles based band, Toto centered around David Paich, Steve Lukather, Bobby Kimball, Steve Porcaro, David Hungate, and Jeff Porcaro. While "Rosanna" is one of their best known hits, the band had cracked the Top 10 numerous times before this 1982 number racked up multiple Grammys (Record of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Best Instrumental Arrangement With Vocal, not to mention the album it was culled from, Toto IV, winning Album Of The Year, Best Engineered Recording, and Best Producer). Now about the Rosanna myth. According to our inside sources (Arquette's cousin, no less), even though she is featured in the video and was dating Lukather at the time, the song was apparently written before she came into the picture.
Mullet haired Daryl Hall and mustachioed John Oates were the toast of the '80s. Hall, interestingly enough, cut his chops as a soul singer for Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the famous founders of the Philly Soul sound. When he finally came together with Oates, the two combined their love of R&B; and Doo Wop with blue-eyed pop and light folk and bang, bang, boom, Hall & Oates were born. But they didn't come into their own until the uprooted themselves from Philadelphia and relocated to New York. This track was the second single off of the duo's self-produced 1980 album Voices. It became a Number 1 single and paved the way for their mega-hit follow-up Private Eyes.
The Doubs already kind of made the list with our #6 entry, Michael McDonald. But here we give the entire group its Yacht Rock toast, though admittedly, they never entered YR territory until after McDonald joined the band in 1975. This track, which was released on the group's 1978 album Minute By Minute, was not only a Number One single, but it helped propel the album to remain in the Number One slot on the charts for a staggering give weeks. The bubbly keyboards and McDonald's bouncy vocals make it a quirky slice of mellow pop goodness. Oh yeah, it was co-written by Kenny Loggins.
The duo of Donald Fagan and Walter Becker brought soft faux jazz to the forefront with their intricate, quasi-progressive compositions and a light, airy feel that pissed off a whole generation of jazz purists at the same time that it climbed the pop charts, became an integral soundtrack to a generation, and provided untold amounts of samples for the world of rap. While entire albums from the Steely canon could be considered Yacht Rock staples, if you had to pinpoint one singular song that exemplifies the good life of Dom Perignon, fresh Colombian powder, and waifish bikini babes strolling with bored determination across the deck of a 100 foot schooner, well this puppy would be it. That the band is named after a dildo from William S. Burroughs' counter culture blow-out, Naked Lunch, is either a brilliantly ironic turn or a self-mocking throwback. This particular hit can be found on the album Gaucho.
While Loggins & Messina may have been photographed at the helm of a swanky yacht on their 1973 album Full Sail, it's Christopher Cross' ubiquitous hit, "Sailing," which takes our top honors on the list. Cross burst onto the scene in 1980 with his self-titled debut album. "Sailing" may be the song everybody remembers from that time, but the album also yielded the Top 2 hit "Ride Like The Wind" and two additional Top 20 hits, "Never Be The Same" and "Say You'll Be Mine." But it was "Sailing" that took the Song of the Year award at the Grammys and it's "Sailing" that has the fortunate (or unfortunate, as the case may be) distinction of actually having a title that fits the whole concept of Yacht Rock to a "T."
Of course no Top 10 list, especially one dedicated to such a maligned sub-genre as Yacht Rock, would be complete without a few Honorable Mentions:
Top 10 Yacht Songs Honorable Mentions
 |  |  |  |
Ambrosia -- "Biggest Part of Me" (1980)
10cc -- "I'm Not In Love" (1975)
Loggins & Messina -- "Watching the River Run" (1973)
- « Previous
- 1
- 2
Recommended Stories and More