The Best Yacht Rock Songs of the '70s and '80s

Gary Katz produced and Roger Nichols engineered, and a queue of guitarists was auditioned before Jay Graydon's solo on 'Peg' was the one kept. Michael McDonald's stacked backing vocal answers every line of the chorus and does more work than the lead does. ABC put it out as a single late in 1977. The album is on Classic Rock '70s; this is the song.

Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins wrote it together at McDonald's house, Ted Templeman produced the session for Warner Bros., and the record took both Song and Record of the Year at the 1980 Grammys. The electric piano figure that opens 'What a Fool Believes' refuses to sit where you expect the downbeat, which is why drummers still argue about how to count it.

Grammy voters handed 'Sailing' Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1981, part of the sweep that made Cross the first act to take all four major awards for one album. Michael Omartian produced the debut for Warner Bros. The guitar is soaked in chorus, the drums are brushed nearly out of existence, and the tempo never once threatens to pick up.

David Paich and Jeff Porcaro wrote it, Columbia pulled it off Toto IV as a single, and it reached No. 1 in February 1983. The engine of 'Africa' is a loop — a marimba-and-flute figure repeating unchanged beneath every verse while the drums pile up over it. Border case: this is AOR craft chasing the same radio slot, and Spotify renders the band TOTO.

Behind Scaggs on Silk Degrees sat Jeff Porcaro, David Paich and David Hungate — most of the band that became Toto two years later. 'Lowdown' won the 1977 Grammy for Best R&B Song, and the clavinet and Hungate's sliding bass carry the tune while the vocal hangs back. Border case: blue-eyed soul at least as much as soft rock.

Warren G built 'Regulate' on this record in 1994, which says most of what needs saying about how far McDonald's solo debut travelled. 'I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)' reached No. 4 in the United States in 1982 and runs on a two-note bass hook with almost nothing else underneath, leaving that grainy voice completely exposed.

Loggins wrote the lyric for his father, who was facing surgery and had stopped wanting to go through with it, then took the music to Michael McDonald, who sings all over the finished record. 'This Is It' won the 1981 Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal, and the horn punches under the last chorus land like somebody shoving a door open.

Pete Christlieb came off a Tonight Show session to play the tenor solo on 'Deacon Blues', cut it in a couple of passes and went home. Becker and Fagen were writing about a suburban nobody who wants a jazz musician's death, and the horn chart behind the second verse slides through more chords than the tune appears to need.

Clouds Records put a silhouette on the 1978 sleeve so radio would not work out that Caldwell was white, and R&B programmers played it regardless. 2Pac later built 'Do for Love' on 'What You Won't Do for Love'. The muted trumpet answering each vocal line is effectively the whole arrangement. Spotify carries only a 1991 Big Deal Records edition, Caldwell's own imprint.

Topping the Hot 100 and the R&B chart at the same time in early 1982 was not a thing many RCA pop acts managed. The drum machine came first: Hall had a pattern running late at night and 'I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)' got built on top of it, bass and saxophone added afterwards. Spotify stocks only the Expanded Edition of Private Eyes.

Jeff Porcaro's half-time shuffle on 'Rosanna' welds a Bernard Purdie feel onto a Bo Diddley pattern, and drummers have been transcribing it ever since. The title comes from Rosanna Arquette, who was seeing Steve Porcaro at the time, though David Paich has always said the lyric is about someone else. It took Record of the Year at the 1983 Grammys.

Ambrosia began as an art-rock band with Alan Parsons at the desk, which is not the résumé you would guess from 'Biggest Part of Me' — a No. 3 hit in 1980 written and sung by David Pack. The saxophone arrives in the opening bars and never really leaves, and the chords under the chorus come straight off a jazz record.

RSO issued the debut album in 1977 and 'Baby Come Back', written by the band's two singers Peter Beckett and J.C. Crowley, spent three weeks at No. 1 the following January. It opens on a clipped, muted guitar figure with the bass answering it, and the chorus turns up with no build at all — which is why it works.

Fagen made The Nightfly with Gary Katz producing and Roger Nichols engineering, and it was among the first pop albums recorded entirely digitally — something the sleeve went out of its way to advertise. 'I.G.Y.' borrows its title from the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58 and rides a shuffle smooth enough to disguise how sour the lyric underneath it is.

A&M had a No. 6 hit with this in 1978, by which point Pablo Cruise had spent years grinding around San Francisco. Cory Lerios's electric piano and the guitar hand the riff of 'Love Will Find a Way' back and forth for the whole song, which is either hypnotic or maddening depending on the hour. Spotify's copyright line reads 1977; the album came out in 1978.