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Pop rock, adult contemporary and blue-eyed soul legend Daryl Hall will throw a fit if you ever call his music “yacht rock” — as if he could ever be that smooth.

In 2005, J.D. Ryznar, Hunter D. Stair and Lane Farnham debuted the first episode of their mockumentary video series Yacht Rock at Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab’s short-film festival Channel 101, unaware that they were about to recontextualize a decades-old movement in popular music forever. Yacht Rock told the comedically dramatized stories behind the biggest artists and smoothest hits of the “West Coast sound” era, as it was previously known, back when kings like Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald blended soft rock, R&b, soul, jazz and about a half-dozen other genres into a new form of relaxing music.

As the series title suggests, Ryznar, Stair, Farnham and their collaborators dubbed this sailor-friendly sound “Yacht Rock.”

Despite running for just 12 episodes...

Don’t get Daryl Hall started on yacht rock.

During a recent appearance on the Broken Record podcast, Hall expressed agitation that Hall and Oates’ music keeps getting lumped in with the term “yacht rock.” “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,” Hall lamented. The “two jerk offs” likely refers to J. D. Ryznar, Hunter D. Stair, and Lane Farnham, who created the 2005 web series Yacht Rock and have since been credited with coining the term. “I don’t even understand it. I never understood it.”

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He continued, genuinely irritated by the term’s persistence in popular music culture despite it being just an amalgam of other genres. “It’s just R&b with maybe some jazz in there,” he said. “It’s mellow R&b.

Across the past few decades, Dan Harmon has garnered a progressively thriving following, and his best TV shows reveal exactly why he has such a devoted fanbase. Whether he's writing, directing, or appearing in front of the camera, Harmon's distinct creative voice shows through within every project he's involved with. With his earliest credits popping up in the late '90s, Harmon has a significant number of projects under his belt spanning an over twenty-year career.

In the 2020s, Dan Harmon is most known for specific shows like Community and Rick and Morty, which are both considered among the best comedies of the 21st century. However, Harmon didn't jump from obscurity straight to helming two of the most successful shows of the last few decades. While many of Harmon's highest regarded works are among his most popular, he has also been involved with numerous lesser-known cult classics. As the...

The funny thing about yacht rock? When the song stylings of Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins and Christopher Cross were actually topping the charts, no one called it “yacht rock.” You might have found those songs on a radio station that promised “album-oriented rock” or “easy listening,” but it wasn’t until a series of comedy videos in the early 2000s that “yacht rock” actually came to be.

Weirdly, you can thank Rick and Morty’s Dan Harmon, at least in part. In the early aughts, Harmon and partner Rob Schrab launched Channel 101, an L.A.-based film fest in which participants submitted “pilots” in the form of low-budget comedy videos. Previous successful filmmakers chose which pilots were shown at live events, while the audiences decided which “series” would be back for encores. One of the most successful entries was Yacht Rock.

Yacht Rock — written and directed by J.D. Ryznar — was a Channel 101 superstar,...

Ask any two music fans what qualifies as yacht rock, and an argument is sure to ensue.

Does Steely Dan count? (Absolutely.) What about Hall & Oates?

In the late 1970s and early ’80s, the term “yacht rock” was not yet a thing. But everyone knew the music of the Doobie Brothers, Toto and Christopher Cross — who swept the 1980 Grammys with his shimmering ballad “Sailing.”

Those acts topped the charts in an era when slick production, smooth melodies and expert chops ruled the radio waves alongside the country-tinged hits of the Eagles. That would all change when MTV crashed the scene. Suddenly the likes of “What a Fool Believes” and “Africa” were consigned to the uncool “soft rock” heap. After the rise of Madonna and Michael Jackson, some of the earlier wave of musicians moved on to soundtracks, like Kenny Loggins with the “Top Gun” hit “Danger Zone.”

Michael McDonald became...

If you’ve ever plumbed the placid seas of yacht rock — that distinct style of jazz-influenced soft pop and rock that surfaced in Southern California in the late Seventies — you know it’s filled with fools.

“There are so many of these songs about expressing your feelings — the fool in love or the heartbreak of a fool,” Garret Price, director of the new film, Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, tells Rolling Stone. “Questlove [in the movie] brought up that yacht rock is emo. It’s emotional music in this hard rock landscape of the Seventies.

On November 29th, HBO will release its documentary about the late 1970s to early 1980s soft rock wave that is now colloquially known as “yacht rock” as if the guys who invented the term didn’t already nail the untold story.

In Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, HBO will continue its Music Box Film series with an examination of an oft-mocked but still beloved era of music history, complete with profiles of yacht rock legends such as Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross and, of course, Steely Dan. Over the last few years, these artists have enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as a new generation of listeners continue to fall in love with the smooth, soulful, jazzy fusion of rock and roll and other predominantly Black genres played by white guys with flowing hair and bushy beards kissed by an ocean breeze.

With Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, HBO hopes to examine...

A new HBO documentary that will air on November 29 tries to shed light on yacht rock, a type of music that dominated radio in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “Music Box: Yacht Rock: A Documentary,” directed by Garret Price, follows the history of a style of music that was once made fun of but is now praised for its unique sound.

Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, and Christopher Cross are famous artists who helped shape the genre in the movie. On stage with them are modern singers like Thundercat and Questlove, who talk about how the genre has had an impact on music for a long time.

The history of the word “yacht rock” is one of the main topics of the program. Price thanks J.D. Ryznar, Hunter D. Stair, and Lane Farham, who made a comedy web series from 2005 to 2010 that made the term famous for the first time.

As music critic and writer Steve Huey once explained, “from 1976 to 1984, the radio airwaves were dominated by really smooth music.” Once known as soft rock, since the mid-2000s pretty much everyone has called it Yacht Rock.

We’re talking of course about the music of people like Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, Toto, Christopher Cross — pop songwriters at the intersection of soul, jazz and disco who were defiantly uncool for their day but are now recognized as the legends they are. And as an early Christmas president, HBO is giving people a crash course via “Yacht Rock: A Documentary,” which debuts Nov. 29.

Directed by Garret Price, the film features commentary from legends like McDonald, Loggins, Cross and more, plus some of the people they influenced — like Thundercat, Mac DeMarco and Questlove.

Watch the trailer below now:

And as you can see in the trailer, thankfully it also finally...

"It rocks! But it doesn't rock too hard." HBO has revealed the trailer for Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, premiering on Max later this month. Get ready for a voyage through soft rock history! It's the next creation in HBO's top notch Music Box series of docs about music history - there were 4 feature docs that debuted last year and this next one is part of the "season" coming up in 2024-2025. Yacht Rock chronicles the rise of the smooth West Coast sound pioneered by artists like Steely Dan, Toto, & Michael McDonald, exploring its widespread influence. The film includes soulful insight from many musical artists including Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald (Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers), Steve Porcaro (Toto), Steve Lukather (Toto), David Paich (Toto), Prince Paul (De La Soul), Brian Robert Jones (Vampire Weekend), Thundercat, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson (The Roots), Mac DeMarco and more; "Yacht Rock" web series...

The next installment of Bill Simmons’ Music Box series dives into the popular Yacht Rock genre populated by artists including Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and Toto. HBO’s Music Box: Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, directed by Garret Price (Daisy Jones & The Six), airs on Friday, November 29, 2024 at 9pm Et/Pt.

Loggins, Cross, McDonald, Prince Paul of De La Soul, Brian Robert Jones of Vampire Weekend, and Toto’s Steve Porcaro, Steve Lukather, and David Paich are featured in the documentary. Web series creator J.D. Ryznar, Questlove, Fred Armisen, also participate along with rock critics and journalists.

HBO offered this lengthy description of the latest Music Box doc: “Music Box: Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary chronicles the emergence and popularity of the West Coast, soft rock pop culture epitomized by musical artists such as Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and Toto. Retroactively dubbed ‘Yacht Rock...

Trim up the outboard engines and just drift around for a bit — you’ve charted a course to the calm waters of yacht rock.

HBO’s original documentary “Music Box: Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary” (not a typo there — though we don’t love the dual colons), directed by Garret Price and executive produced by Bill Simmons (“Andre The Giant”), debuts Friday, November 29 at 9 p.m. Et/Pt. It will be available to stream on Max.

The dock doc goes behind the music on the West Coast soft rock popularized by late-1970s and early-1980s musicians like Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, and Kenny Loggins. Their tunes were retroactively dubbed “Yacht Rock” — by a comedy website series of all things.

“Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary” brings forward the musicians and producers of the scene, and details “the genesis, evolution, and downfall of the sound, which was appreciated for its high-quality production, soulful vocals,...

The subgenre, Yacht Rock, is a relatively new term given to easy-listening older tunes of the 70s, 80s and 90s. HBO has now released the trailer for a new documentary in their Music Box series.

Directed by acclaimed director Garret Price (Daisy Jones & The Six; Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage; Love, Antosha), Music Box: Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary chronicles the emergence and popularity of the West Coast, soft rock pop culture epitomized by such prolific musical artists like Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and Toto. It’s rare to see so many Yacht Rock artists in front of the camera telling their iconic stories, but finally viewers will get a rare glimpse into their worlds.

The HBO Original documentary Music Box: Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary is executive produced by The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, debuts Friday, November 29 (9:00-10:35 p.m. Et/Pt). The...

This story was originally published on June 26, 2015

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, musical artists like Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, Steely Dan, Toto, Hall and Oates, and dozens of others regularly popped up on each other’s records, creating a golden era of smooth-music collaboration.

And on June 26th, 2005, an internet phenomenon was born. In 12 short but memorable episodes — first via the the short-film series Channel 101 and then online — Jd Ryznar, Hunter Stair, Dave Lyons, Lane Farnham and their friends redefined an era and coined a term for the sultry croonings of McDonald,...

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, musical artists like Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, Steely Dan, Toto, Hall and Oates, and dozens of others regularly popped up on each other's records, creating a golden era of smooth-music collaboration.

And 10 years ago (June 26th, 2005), an internet phenomenon was born. In 12 short but memorable episodes — first via the the short-film series Channel 101 and then online — Jd Ryznar, Hunter Stair, Dave Lyons, Lane Farnham and their friends redefined an era and coined a term for the sultry croonings of McDonald, Fagen, et al.

As Drunk History continues its second season on Comedy Central (Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Et), viewers keep learning fascinating stories of America’s lesser-known past—and how far co-creator/interviewer Derek Waters will go to both get his inebriated friends to tell them and actors to reenact them. Here, we discuss some of season two’s early highlights (like “Weird Al” Yankovic as Hitler).

As for what lies ahead, the July 15 “American Music” episode features Johnny Knoxville as Johnny Cash and Jon Daly as Kris Kristofferson, as well as Jack McBrayer as DJ Alan Freed. “He doesn’t scream DJ,...