MIX NO. 77 // I’M THE CAPTAIN NOW IIIII
In 1981, Christopher Cross went to the Grammys and swept Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist in one night. He beat Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Nobody had ever done it before, and no one did again for 39 years. That is where one of my favorite genres of music started. Not as a novelty, but something worthy of accolades. Smooth, expensive, and played by session musicians who could sight-read anything that was put in front of them and then go do it all over again on someone else’s record that afternoon. It just didn’t have a real name yet.
The Name + Where We Are Now
“Yacht Rock” wasn’t coined by a critic. It came from a 2005 web series in which three guys imagined Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, and the Doobie Brothers as a circle of friends and petty rivals loitering around Marina del Rey. It was pretty funny and managed to rename an entire decade of American music. Unfortunately, with a cool name came the stereotypes. For twenty years, “yacht rock” meant boat shoes, a captain’s hat, and a cheesy bar crawl. It was almost a costume people would put on for the night, which is sad for records that took months to make and cost a fortune.
Yacht Rock isn’t the butt of jokes much anymore. HBO put out a documentary a few years ago where the actual artists sat down and talked about the whole thing, and the culture sort of started to show real respect to them. Good. They deserve it. But while everyone else was trying to figure out if it was acceptable to like Michael McDonald, a whole new generation of musicians went ahead and just made the music. Not as a bit, but as a whole nod to what came before. Straight, on purpose, with their names on it.
What’s Changed
The people making this type of music now didn’t grow up with yacht rock as music they had to rebel against. They, like me, grew up with it just being around. Like furniture. It was in the car, at the grocery store, and even in their parents’ kitchen. There wasn’t really anything to be embarrassed about, so no one really was. So many artists today are making records that could have been released in 1979 and don’t appear funny in the slightest.
The gear got cheap, and getting that specific sound that used to require a full room in Los Angeles and a budget now only requires a laptop. And then there’s the loop with Japan. City Pop was the parallel version of this. Japanese artists in the late seventies and eighties were making their own gleaming, jazz-inflected soft rock that was largely heard outside of the country. The YouTube algorithm dug it up around 2018 and handed it to a generation of us that never knew it existed, leading to a new wave of modern artists with a shared sound and vocabulary.
So what does all of this have in common? Well, they all have cords that move. Yacht rock is calm while a great deal is happening. The harmony gets complicated, and the entire craft is making that sound like nothing.
The Series
I’m the Captain Now has been going since 2018-ish, and the format has never really changed: yacht rock classics with modern stuff woven throughout. Volume IIII landed in 2023 and ran way past two hours because I couldn’t bring myself to cut anything.
This one is built differently. There are a few classics tossed in, and none of them are the obvious picks like Sailing or What a Fool Believes. They’ve been on enough playlists and don’t need my help. Everything else was made recently by people who are still touring. The modern half of this playlist was so strong that it deserved to carry the whole vibe on its own.
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Distance Between Us // Young Gun Silver Fox
Easy to Love // Sam Evian
Sleepwalker // TOPS
Pleasure Line // Video Age
Flakes // Vesuvio Solo
Need Your Love // Tennis
Partners in Motion // Wild Nothing
Negroni Summer 09 // Donny Benet
Ocean Breeze // Sam Greenfield
Napa // Dana and Alden
Stay-at-Home-DJ // Alan Palomo
Last Night // Dabeull feat. Jordan Lee
Fool Around // Strongboi
Cocosette // Molly Lewis
The Lady Wants to Know // Michael Franks
Loretta // Ginger Root
I’m In Love // Tomoko Aran
Last Summer Whisper // Anri
4:00 am // Taeko Onuki
Sports Men // Haruomi Hosono
Homage // Mild High Club
Boat Cruise // Thundercat
Are You Looking Up? // MK.GEE
Many Times // DIJON
To Prove My Love // Ned Doheny
Rockin’ You Eternally // Leon Ware
Flipside // Leisure
Always On the Line // World Brain
Time to Walk Away // Washed Out
August 10 // Khruangbin
A Matter of Fact // Bibio
Maddy // Jackie Cohen
All I Wanted // Hannah Cohen
