The Comedy Videos That Invented Yacht Rock

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, placing in the top five (and earning more episodes) until its 10th episode finished out of the running in June 2006, finally earning “cancellation” nearly a year after its debut. The series continued to be a popular download on the Channel 101 website. 

Funny enough, the term “yacht rock” was rarely used in the series, instead using the term “smooth music.” The series featured exaggerated versions of the genre’s legends — McDonald was the smooth-music true believer, Loggins the sell-out who rocked cheesy movie soundtracks, John Oates the abusive force behind the scenes of Hall & Oates and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan the incoherent babbler. 

Despite getting ribbed about serving as the soundtrack for rich a-hole yacht parties, most of the legends of what became yacht rock grew to embrace the made-up genre, as seen in the recent Netflix dock-umentary Yacht Rock. 

“I thought Yacht Rock was hilarious,” McDonald told Time Out New York. “And uncannily, you know, those things always have a little bit of truth to them. It’s kind of like when you get a letter from a stalker who’s never met you. They somehow hit on something, and you have to admit they’re pretty intuitive.”

Oates, who didn’t necessarily get a flattering portrayal, also was into it. “I think Yacht Rock was the beginning of this whole Hall & Oates resurrection,” he told Seattle Weekly. “They were the first ones to start to parody us and put us out there again, and a lot of things have happened because of Yacht Rock.”

The goofy parody has likely bought a bunch of actual yachts for the members of bands like Toto, Ambrosia and the Little River Band, who inexplicably find their old hits in constant rotation on outlets like SiriusXM’s Yacht Rock channel.

One artist who doesn’t appreciate being lumped in with the Al Jarreaus and Gino Vannellis, however, is Fagen. Despite being perhaps the most-played artist on yacht-rock streams, he wants nothing to do with the label. When approached by HBO documentary director Garret Price for comment on the phenomenon, Fagen responded, “Oh, Yacht Rock. I’ll tell you what — why don’t you go fuck yourself?”