The gentle rise, fall, and revival of Seventies soft rock rolls along like a boat amongst the waves in the new trailer Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, arriving Nov. 29 on HBO.
Directed by Garret Price, Yacht Rock looks at the history and legacy of this genre of music, which was spearheaded by a handful of supremely talented white musicians, drawing on Black music traditions, working in Southern California in the late Seventies. The new trailer opens with a trio of talking heads accurately describing the genre known alternately as soft rock, adult-oriented rock, and (of course) yacht rock.
“It rocks — but it doesn’t rock too hard,” quips Mac DeMarco. “The singers all seem to be saying, ‘Hey, it’s gonna be OK,’” Fred Armisen adds. “It’s perfect sitting down dancing music,” Questlove declares.
From there, the trailer offers a condensed history of the genre, highlighting how it came to dominate the music landscape thanks to artists like Michael McDonald, Steely Dan, Christopher Cross, and Kenny Loggins before suddenly disappearing alongside the rise of the music video. The film will also explore how the genre began to enjoy a resurgence decades later, thanks to hip-hop producers sampling these old records, and the web comedy series Yacht Rock, which popularized the now prominent genre name.
Yacht Rock will feature interviews with an array of musicians, journalists, and critics, as well as plenty of luminaries of the era, like McDonald, Cross, Loggins, and Toto’s Steve Porcaro, Steve Lukather, and David Paich. Other interviewees include De La Soul’s Prince Paul and Yacht Rock web series creators J.D. Ryznarand Steve Huey.