While the yacht rock genre was at its peak in the late 70s and early 80s, the phrase “yacht rock” didn’t enter the lexicon until 2005. Writer/actor J.D. Ryznar created an online series titled Yacht Rock which dramatized the lives of the era’s top names, including Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins.

While people (and Sirius/XM Channel 70) have expanded the definition to include a wide range of soft rock, Ryznar and his collaborators take a very hard line on what they consider true yacht rock. They even maintain a website called Yacht or Nyacht? on which they measure the yacht-ness of songs and artists on a 100-point scale.

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