Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - What a Fool Believes, Part 2
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 August 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
In part 2 of this episode of Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy continues his deep dive on Yacht Rock, the retroactive genre label for the sleek, jazzy, R&B-flavored sound that cropped up in the late '70s and early '80s amongst polished, perfectionist West Coast studio musicians.
Whatever you call it, this music really did command the charts at the turn of the ’80s: from Steely Dan to George Benson, Michael McDonald to Kenny Loggins, Toto to…Michael Jackson?! Believe it: even Thriller is partially a Yacht Rock album. This month, Hit Parade breaks down what Yacht Rock was and how it took over the charts four decades ago—from the perfectionism of “Peg,” to the bounce of “What a Fool Believes,” to the epic smoothness of “Africa.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:08.6 | Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from |
| 0:16.0 | coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number |
| 0:22.7 | One series? On our last episode, we explained the history and parameters of Yacht Rock, |
| 0:30.4 | a term invented in the aughts to define smooth, California-based music from the late 70s and early 80s. |
| 0:39.6 | And as 1978 turned to 79, the Doobie Brothers, led by vocalist keyboardist Michael McDonald, |
| 0:48.5 | were about to score their biggest hit ever with their bounciest yattiest song. |
| 0:55.2 | What a fool believes believes was a song about romantic regret and the impossibility of rekindling a dormant romance. |
| 1:14.6 | It established a lyrical theme the yacht rock coiners would later identify as core to the genre. |
| 1:22.6 | It was about a romantic fool. |
| 1:25.6 | But Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald |
| 1:28.8 | buried their ruminative lyrics |
| 1:31.3 | in a jaunty package. |
| 1:33.7 | After Loggins had his turn with it |
| 1:36.0 | on his 1978 Nightwatch album, |
| 1:39.8 | McDonald cut it with the dubies, |
| 1:42.4 | and it became even jauntier. |
| 1:45.0 | The dubies, what a fool believes, hit number one in April 1979. That same month, their |
| 2:02.9 | minute-by-minute LP topped the Billboard album chart. |
| 2:07.3 | But on top of its bespoke lyrics about romantic imprudence, |
| 2:12.3 | Fool also established a yacht rock archetype, |
| 2:16.2 | The Doobie Bounce. |
... |
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