Yacht Rock - what I learned

Keep your imagination active!

Over the holidays, my husband and I watched Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary. I’d been hearing the term Yacht Rock over the past couple of years and really didn’t understand what it was – now I do. The Dockumentary chronicles the rise of soft-rock in the 1970s and its unlikely reevaluation over the past decade, with profiles of key artists from the genre, such as Michael McDonald, Steely Dan, Kenny Loggins, Toto, and Christopher Cross. Here are my takeaways:

·       Michael McDonald has the most exquisite voice ever. I would listen to him sing the phone book

·       Michael and Kenny Loggins were great together- now I will seek out more recordings of their duets

·       The members of TOTO are everywhere, like weeds across this genre, sitting in on so many recording sessions and writing boatloads of songs

·       Christopher Cross had so many hit songs, not just Sailing!

·        It’s true. Video killed the radio star.

"Video Killed the Radio Star" is both a literal and symbolic phrase. It originates from the 1979 hit song by The Buggles, which laments the cultural shift that occurred with the rise of music videos and MTV in the late 20th century. Ironically, we saw the Buggles perform last year as the opening act for Seal.

I hated MTV. I refused to sit around and watch music videos on TV. Now I better understand why. The videos took away my own imagination – what I loved about listening to great music was creating my own scenes, my own dreams in my mind (OK, sometimes my own words!). MTV videos wanted to show me the approved, pre-packaged story of the song and I was having none of it.

The message here is don’t stop dreaming of what’s possible. Don’t let anybody else tell you how it should look, how you should look. What you should and should not do. Be you.