I caught up with HBO’s “Yacht Rock” documentary last night.
Is it a coincidence Yacht Rock rhymes with brain rot? The movie is a celebration of everything that went wrong with popular music in the early 80s. It’s a glorification of crap.
The basic conceit here is that because Steely Dan had so many outside musicians help them, they became the fulcrum for this thing. Nothing could be further from the truth. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s sly enigmatic lyrics and complex jazz inventions were pure genius. And when they saw their time ending in 1981 they got out. That’s when this bland interpretation of their music crept into pop.
It’s not like there aren’t some nuggets of gold from groups characterized as Yacht Rock. Toto’s “Hold the Line” is an example. A lot of Michael McDonald’s Doobie Brothers work was very good. But then it started to get copied, with each copy getting fainter. Someone in the doc says that “What a Fool Believes” is the zenith of Yacht Rock. But it was the rip offs that made it so awful.
One thing about this doc, concerning McDonald. His hit, “I Keep Forgetting,” was a rip off of Chuck Jackson’s 1961 hit, “I Keep Forgetting,” which was written by giants Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. McDonald had to pay them and add their names to the credits of his hit. This is not mentioned at all in “Yacht Rock,” which is disturbing. It’s also one of the many glaring mistakes in the film.
In 1981 Christopher Cross won a bunch of awards for his Yacht Rock song, “Sailing.” He may be a very nice guy but I find his music as cringey as humanly possible. In 1981, smart people were listening to Prince, Talking Heads, Blondie, The Police, Elvis Costello, early rap, the Ramones, and so on. This other stuff was to be avoided like the plague. And Cross’s Grammy? Could you really say that “Sailing” was a better Best Song than “New York, New York”? Cross’s album was more important than Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” This is garbage.
So, I vent. But “Yacht Rock” sent me over the top. It’s as unknowing a documentary as HBO’s Stax film from earlier this year. HBO makes such a good non fiction films on balance, it’s a shame they can’t get this genre right.
