The 5 Best Yacht Rock Hits Of The '80s

Yacht rock suffers from a naming problem. "Yacht rock" sounds elitist and exclusive, like rich people are just hiring live bands like the dudes on the Titanic. And ... maybe they are! But that's not, or not just, what yacht rock is. Yacht rock is a vibes-based genre of soft rock focusing on light, catchy tunes, easy to listen to without falling into the death zone of "easy listening." As with any genre, the exact guidelines depend on who you're talking to, but if it's cheerful (or at most bittersweet), goes down smooth, and feels late '70s or early '80s, check the label to see if it's yacht rock.

You don't need a yacht, per se, to enjoy yacht rock — though a beer and a body of water to rest your feet in are always nice. While yacht rock is more a state of being than a specific time, it flourished most in the early '80s, so here are some of our chillest jams from the subgenre's heyday.

"You Make My Dreams (Come True)" was a major hit for Hall & Oates, reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Although it never claimed the top spot like "Maneater," it feels every bit as enduring. (There was just no catching up to "Maneater," even if they've got plenty of other great jams.) The song is simply gleeful in a way that rock can struggle to reach: Rock can be exciting, intense, and triumphant, but it's hard to put together a rock song with a goofy, crooked-smile, just-kissed vibe. Hall & Oates landed it with this borderline-bubblegum feel-good anthem.

Its popularity has only grown since its original chart run, with the song amassing more than a billion streams. A billion is a staggering number, especially when measured in dances around the house, bobbing back and forth in an office chair, well-lubricated karaoke duos, and so forth. With this one sweet and exquisitely upbeat song, Hall & Oates have done more than most people to bump up the average world happiness level.

It sounds like a borderline-offensive joke: "Caribbean Queen" was originally recorded as "European Queen." That version hit the bottom of the U.K. charts with an uninspiring splat, perhaps unsurprising given that they had their own European queen and a whole national anthem about her already. Rerecorded as "Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run)," the reincarnated song thrived on the U.S. charts, hitting No. 1 for two weeks and making Trinidad-born Billy Ocean a for-real star.

"Caribbean Queen" is a classic "I saw a pretty girl" song, but hey — sometimes you see a pretty girl, and the implied exoticism of a "Caribbean queen" added a touch of transgressive appeal. It's lyrically goofy ("She said I was the tiger she wanted to tame"), but Ocean sells it well, hamming it up to the limits of credibility while keeping his main melodic line clean, clear, and admirable. The '80s-tastic synthesizer accents and a "sexy brass" interlude place this song perfectly in its era and genre. This is 1984 yacht rock, and some of the best of its kind.

You can tell Ambrosia came to maturity in the shadow of the Bee Gees-dominated late 1970s. The good old-fashioned male falsetto is alive and well on their track "Biggest Part of Me," though the Ambrosia boys show off a cleaner, better-controlled treble range on the track. Reaching No. 3, this jam tied with "How Much I Feel" for the highest chart spot Ambrosia would ever reach, though the band has had an admirable afterlife of reunions, compilations, and performances on music-lover cruises in the Caribbean.

"Biggest Part of Me" is what you might call a good-marriage song. The singer already has the girl, and he's making sure she knows how much she means to him: "More than an easy feelin', she brings joy to me... Flow like a lazy river for an eternity." It's got a relaxed, Sunday-morning feel to it, but interesting harmonies in the backing vocals and some cool synth work elevate it, adding the creative flourishes that make a song good, not merely pleasant. Nothing wrong with listening to this in a deck chair next to whoever you think is the biggest part of you.

The royalty checks probably soften the blow, but you could almost feel bad for Toto: The ubiquity and meme magic of "Africa" have so overshadowed the rest of their work that their secondary hits don't get the oxygen they deserve. Their cheery, flirty second-best is "Rosanna," which won them one of six Grammy awards in 1983. (It never got to No. 1 on the charts thanks to the combined powers of "Don't You Want Me" and "Eye of the Tiger.")

"Rosanna" has long been rumored to be about Rosanna Arquette, who was dating band member Steve Porcaro, but it wasn't really. She just had a name with the right rhythm for the song. Arquette did try to claim "credit" for it, and you can see why. It's got the complexity of a power ballad while still going down smooth. Piano, finger snaps, a stage-whispered chorus, and the psychedelic synth break about halfway. The song has a "more is more" instrumentation that makes it sort of a softer-rock "Bohemian Rhapsody." Combine all that with the professionalism of experienced session musicians working together, and you've got something that earned its Grammy.

Yacht rock doesn't strictly have to reference boats, or the sea, or even a shrimp cocktail, but the genre really does shine when it decides to go with a nautical theme. Christopher Cross became the first artist to sweep the four major Grammy categories in a single night. "Sailing" earned Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s). Not bad for a rookie singing a chill jam about floating away on a boat. 

But what a chill jam it is. "Sailing" hits a complicated balance between wistful and optimistic: It's not quite a "come back after defeat" song, but there's a sadness in the music that sharpens the hopeful lyrics. "The canvas can do miracles" is a particularly inspired line, evoking both the sail and the artist's canvas. Escape, or at least the possibility of escape, is a common and healthy fantasy, but it's usually tinged with sadness. (You're escaping from something, after all.) Cross captured that feeling better than most.