Naim Goes Deeper - Yacht Rock

Yacht rock, formally known as ‘adult orientated rock’, ‘soft rock’ or ‘West Coast Sound’ originated in the late 70’s, early 80’s and was associated with the popular Southern Californian leisurely activity of sailing.

The key defining rules of the genre as describes as follows:

-  "keep it smooth, even when it grooves, with more emphasis on the melody than on the beat"

-  "keep the emotions light, even when the sentiment turns sad (as is so often the case in the world of the sensitive yacht-rocksman)”

-  "always keep it catchy, no matter how modest or deeply buried in the tracklist the tune happens to be.”

Our recent partnership with Princess Yachts inspired us to delve deeper into this genre whilst we strive to re-write the rulebook of acoustics for the luxury marine sector because everyone wants to hear these classics without comprising the sound.

Dire Straights - Sultans of Swing
Probably the bands most impressive accomplishment - Sultans of Swing is a timeless classic with one of the most iconic guitar solos ever. Fact: “Sultans of Swing” was initially recoded as a demo in 1977 and some support from BBC Radio which led to a bidding war amongst record labels. Dire Straights decided on Phonogram Records who had them re-record it for their eponymous debut album. It was then officially released in internationally as a single in Jan of 1979.  Give it another listen and yet another lease of life on your sound system.

Steely Dan - Peg
First released on the band’s 1977 album ‘Aja’ - Peg was one of Steely Dan’s longest running chart hit. The song is thought to be a reference to Broadway star and one-time Hollywood actress Peg Entwiste who became famous in 1932 by jumping to her death off the Hollywood sign before her first film was ever released. Fact: The song's guitar solo was attempted by seven top studio session guitarists ‒ before Jay Graydon's version became the "keeper”. He worked on the song for about six hours before the band was satisfied.

Christopher Cross - Sailing
Grammy Award winning track ‘Sailing’ is commonly described as the “greatest soft-rock song of all time”.Recorded in 1989 the song was one of the first digitally recorded songs to chart, utilising the 3M Digital Recording System. FACT: Since its debut, it has been covered by many artists, including Avant, Barry Manilow, Greenskeepers, N’Sync, Phalia, Patrick Yandall and the duo of Moya Brennan and Cormac de Barra… it was also sampled in Puff Daddy’s 1999 song “Best Friend”.

Listen to the playlist on Spotify and Tidal.