Daryl Hall has branded yacht rock a “f****** joke” and says his band Hall and Oates were “misjudged” as the sub-genre.
Originally the name of a 2005 comedy series by J.D. Ryznar, Hunter Stair, and Lane Farnham, yacht rock was often used to label soft rock acts of the mid-1970s to mid-1980s – but it’s not a label the ‘Maneater’ hitmaker ever wants to be associated with.
Speaking on the ‘Broken Record’ podcast, he bemoaned: “This is something I don’t understand. First of all, yacht rock was a f****** joke by two jerk offs in California and suddenly it became a genre.
“I don’t even understand it. I never understood it.”
The 78-year-old musician says people found it hard to put Hall and Oates in a box, so they would use the terms yacht rock and soft rock.
He added: “It’s just R’n’B, with maybe some jazz in there. It’s mellow R’n’B. It’s smooth R’n’B. I don’t see what the yacht part is.”
Daryl went on: “People misjudged us because they couldn’t label us.
“They always came up with all this kind of c***, soft rock and yacht rock and all this other nonsense. And none of it, none of it really describes anything that I do really.”
Other bands who were branded yacht rock included Toto, Steely Dan, and The Doobie Brothers.
Meanwhile Daryl recently insisted he’ll never work with John Oates again.
The singer sued his former musical partner in 2023 to stop him from selling their stake in their publishing company, Whole Oats Enterprises – a move he branded “the ultimate partnership betrayal”.
He was unable to talk about the legal wrangle, but he admitted things had gone too far for them to reunite.
He told the Sunday Times’ Culture magazine in March: “That ship has gone to the bottom of the ocean. I’ve had a lot of surprises in my life, disappointments, betrayals, so I’m kind of used to it…
“I’ve been involved with some pretty shady characters over the years. That’s where the problems start.”
Daryl also admitted he feels frustrated that his prolific songwriting in Hall and Oates – who sold 60 million records – has largely gone unrecognised.
He said: “The songs with his lead vocal are the songs he wrote, and all the other ones, which is about 90 per cent, are the ones I wrote…
“It was very frustrating.”