Daryl Hall is Not a Fan of the Term ‘Yacht Rock’

The term "yacht rock" has been embraced by many in recent years, but don't count Daryl Hall among those masses.

In a recent appearance on the Broken Record podcast, Hall went off on the term, saying, "First of all, yacht rock was a f---ing joke by two jerk-offs in California, and suddenly it became a genre. I don't even understand it; I never understood it."

The "jerk-offs" in question appear to be the creators of the web series Yacht Rock, whose description on IMDb reads, "Mockumentary web series about American soft rock stars of the late 1970s and early 1980s era."

The Yacht Rock series eventually led to the 2024 HBO documentary aptly titled Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, which chronicled the careers of Christopher Cross, Steely Dan, Toto, Kenny Loggins, and Michael McDonald.

Interestingly, Hall isn't alone in despising the term. Donald Fagen of Steely Dan is one of the notable figures who declined to sit for an interview for Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary.

In the film, director Garret Price calls up Fagen to ask if he’d be willing to be interviewed for the documentary about “this genre.” Fagen asks Price what the genre is, and he says, “Um, yacht rock.”

Fagen, unamused, answered, “Oh, yacht rock. Well, I tell you what. What don’t you go f— yourself?”