Eight years ago, we celebrated Yachtober in this landlocked desert paradise we call The Hideaway. There were listicles and playlists and guest posts aplenty. It was a huge success with our viewers. This year, in our annual late summer all-hands-on-deck staff meeting*, we voted 1-0 not to feature Yachtober in 2024. About a month after the meeting adjourned, one of The Hideaway's critical darlings (darling critics?) published a listicle of The 25 Greatest Yacht Rock Songs of All Time which we eagerly dived into wondering what juicy deep cuts would be brought to the surface. In a not-quite-scientific attempt to gauge the list, we ran it through the Yachtski scale. This is how that experiment went.
Matt Mitchell's list begins with their definition of the genre. They say that every person has their own definition of what yacht rock is, was, or can be and that they know a yacht rock song when they hear one. And speaking of one, Matt self-imposed a one-song-per-artist rule and his own No Rupert Holmes Anywhere Ever rule. Their list of twenty-five songs includes information and context for each title so be sure to check it out.
The list immediately grabbed my attention with five of my favorite songs of all time in quick succession. "Baby Come Back" is on our list of yacht rock songs so we were glad to see its Yachtski score qualified it as official Yacht Rock in the eyes of the genre's creators.
We have "I Can't Tell You Why" pegged as a yacht rock jam so it was a surprise to see its disappointing score on the scale. The thing that first stood out about all five songs is that they all got considerable airplay on The Drive. Mitchell goes 3 for 5 in this frame but their overall average is .400 which isn't too shabby, is it?
"Rosanna" is a yacht rock no-brainer but we also have "Year Of The Cat" on our list which scored pretty low on the Yachtski Scale but we know what we like. Mitchell knows what they know and likes what they like as well.
"Too many from 1972" was our first thought. "That's his Steely Dan pick" was our second thought. Seven out of twenty is Mitchell's Yachtski Scale batting average with only five more pitches. None of these five tracks made our yacht rock list.
Once again, 1972 ruins everything. Boz and the Bros rise to the occasion - the Bros tune is at the tippy-top of the Yachtski Scale! - though with an overall Yachtski average of 47.79, the list is Not Yacht. Only it is yacht rock. Just not according to the Yachtski Scale. We're a little scared to run our yacht rock list of songs through the Scale now. We were thinking we'd step to the plate like Aaron Judge and crush it but now we're slinking away, hoping no one notices, all too afraid of a potentially harsh reality and a noogie to our ego.
*Other meeting topics:
- Since we plan on purchasing at least four Christmas music albums this year, there will probably be at least one Holiday music-themed post in 2024. But we couldn't decide if it'll be published in November or December. Keep your eyes peeled. (Update: we have three Xmas discs in hand and one is on preorder.)
- After much back-and-forth vigorous yet polite debate, we voted to gloss over the paucity of new and creative post ideas by dredging through the Drafts folder and polishing up a few posts that didn't exactly cut the mustard the first time. Ten posts in that Drafts folder existed only as Titles so we've had our work cut out.
- We voted to purposefully stop buying volumes of the NOW Yearbook series. We won't say when we stopped buying them but we hope to resume our reviews of the ones we have sometime soon.
- After obsessing over synth pop music for a few weeks before the meeting, we unanimously voted to run a series of posts called Synth Pop Saturdays. We did not reach a decision on how many Saturdays will be synth pop but you, dear viewer, will undoubtedly be the second to know.
- Proposals to change the official font of The Hideaway, the header graphic/logo of The Hideaway, and officially end The Hideaway were all narrowly defeated. Sorry.
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