It's no secret that we here at Exclaim! are lovers of a good ol' consummate yacht rock song (or dock rock, for those of us in more realistic tax brackets). But Daryl Hall, he can't go for that.
Of course, many would probably consider Hall to be within the quote-unquote genre's vast waters, given Daryl Hall & John Oates's smooth-sailing, soulful sound that made them icons in the '70s and '80s. While there's no word yet on what his very estranged former collaborator Oates thinks, Hall has rejected the yacht rock label being applied to their music.
"This is something I don't understand," the musician told interviewer Justin Richmond on a recent episode of Rick Rubin's Broken Record podcast. "First of all, yacht rock was a fucking joke by two jerk-offs in California, and suddenly it became a genre," referencing a series of comedy videos dating back to the early aughts. "I don't even understand it. I never understood it… It's just R&B, with maybe some jazz in there. It's mellow R&B, smooth R&B. I don't see what the yacht part is."
Hall continued of being added to yacht rock playlists populated by the Totos and Doobie Brothers of the world, "People misjudged us because they couldn't label us… They always came up with all this kind of crap, soft rock and yacht rock and all this other nonsense. And none of it, none of it really describes anything that I do, really."
Steely Dan's Donald Fagen is also among the musical figures depicted in the aforementioned comedy videos who have spoken out against the yacht rock designation, while the likes of Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald have embraced it, appearing in HBO's recent doc(k)umentary on the subject and performing on yacht rock tours.
You can listen to the full interview with Hall below, but it's all feeling a little out of touch for someone with an album called H2O in their discography.