Kenny Loggins Gives His Two Cents on Yacht Rock and Working with Thundercat

Who doesn’t love a good yacht rock playlist? Full of gentle, breezy tunes perfect for your waterfront escapades or just hanging out with a group of friends.

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Well, we know for certain that Kenny Loggins is a fan of the yacht rock genre. (Good call, Loggins.) In an interview with Pure Throwback Radio on Apple Music Hits, Loggins cruised through the conversation by giving his take on the boat-inspired songs.

“A lot of people talk about yacht rock being its own genre, its own era of pop music, if you will,” he said. “And it is somewhat, but it’s also taken from earlier sources and earlier artists who stayed contemporary all through the eighties as well. And obviously, because it’s so R&B influenced, there’s a number of black artists that were very influential in the creation of the so-called yacht rock genre… I don’t think we were really thinking we were creating a new genre, we were extending out the things that we’d heard and were influenced by.”

Pure Throwback Radio on Apple Music Hits

Also in conversation with Apple Music, Loggins revealed what it was like to work with funk artist Thundercat on the yacht rock song “Show You The Way.”

“[A]n artist named Thundercat won a bunch of Grammy’s and when asked who else he would like to write with, he mentioned me and Mike McDonald,” Loggins said. “And both my oldest and my youngest boys called me independent of each other and said, ‘Dad, you have to work with Thundercat.’ … So I sort of orchestrated that and got Michael in on it. The three of us wrote a song together called ‘Show You The Way.’ Some people might consider this Yacht Rock, if so you can say that Yacht Rock lives on, but you make up your own mind (laughs).”

Well, we’d set sail with Loggins and crew any day. Check out more of our favorite yacht rock songs HERE and jump aboard.

Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM

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