\u201cThe album blew up. Who would have guessed? People ask: \u2018Is it hard to have such big success?\u2019 I\u2019ll take all my gifts in one year and enjoy it. It\u2019s so rare to have that kind of acceptance. I think it\u2019s wonderful.\u201d <\/p>\n
In 1981 he became the first of only two artists to achieve what is regarded as a clean sweep at the Grammys, winning album, song and record of the year, plus best new artist. (The other artist is Billie Eilish.) That year he had another global hit when he collaborated on Arthur\u2019s Theme (The Best That You Can Do) \u2013 which accompanied Arthur, the hit Dudley Moore romcom, and would win Cross an Oscar \u2013 with Bacharach and Bacharach\u2019s then-wife, Carole Bayer Sager.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was late night. I went up to their house. A beautiful home in Beverly Hills. I walked in and there were already two Oscars on the mantelpiece, for Raindrops Keep Fallin\u2019 on My Head [from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid]. So very intimidated to sit down with Burt. He was very lovely. You never forget he\u2019s Burt Bacharach, but he makes you comfortable. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d just won the Grammy. I was pretty hot after that. I was the new kid in town, as The Eagles called me. When I left that night I was still out of body from working with Burt. Carole said: \u2018I think this is an Oscar song.\u2019 They know better than me. I didn\u2019t believe it. I was, like: \u2018Wow \u2026 what a trip.\u2019 And then it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four Grammys and an Oscar had made Cross one of the most successful artists of the early 1980s. But the industry was changing. The dawn of the MTV era posed an existential threat to yacht rock and its leading lights, who were often bearded and\/or partial to dad jeans and generally lacking in glamour.<\/p>\n
Cross and his peers couldn\u2019t compete in a world where big stars were supposed to look like Duran Duran, M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce or Madonna. <\/p>\n
Forty years later, however, the last laugh goes to Cross. MTV has long since faded as a force in music, yet here he is, playing to some of the biggest crowds of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure you might remember the song by The Buggles, Video Killed the Radio Star. It was very, very prophetic and clever, and I think it\u2019s true. I started my career watching Joni Mitchell with an acoustic guitar, David Crosby in a T\u2011shirt. That whole [image] thing wasn\u2019t part of it. It was about the songwriting and about the songs, not about the presentation. <\/p>\n
\u201cVideo was very strange for me. I don\u2019t like people interpreting music totally through a video. They tried to interpret Joni Mitchell\u2019s visual landscape, which I think is a big mistake.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then you got into this thing with videos where it was totally \u2018T and A\u2019 \u2013 women scantily dressed. I did a couple of videos and I wasn\u2019t comfortable doing that. There were some valid artists who embraced it. I\u2019ve survived it \u2013 because MTV is sort of gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cross has made peace with yacht rock. If he wrinkles his nose at the name, he appreciates that it has introduced younger audiences to his music. \u201cThe yacht-rock moniker has given all of us a big boost.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Christopher](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/5ADN7573TRAL5AMKBOQEUU64CQ.jpg\")
Christopher Cross performs at the Admiralspalast on May 5, 2026, in Berlin. Photograph: Frank Hoensch\/Redferns <\/p>\n
He can\u2019t object too much, because his daughter, Madison, produced a 2024 celebration of yacht rock for HBO. It interviewed many of the scenes\u2019 luminaries, including McDonald, Kenny \u201cFootloose\u201d Loggins, and Steve Porcaro and David Paich of Toto, alongside yacht-rock fans such as Thundercat, Questlove and Mac DeMarco.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have romanticised this time period in LA, but I think a lot of that goes towards bands like Fleetwood Mac or Eagles,\u201d the film\u2019s director, Garret Price, told<\/a> Rolling Stone in 2024. \u201cYet this whole other world was happening in these recording sessions where the Toto members were playing, Michael McDonald was doing background vocals and Christopher Cross was figuring out his first album. That felt like an untapped 1970s.\u201d<\/p>\n Untapped or not, appreciation for yacht rock as a concept is not universal, as Madison Cross and her fellow producers discovered when they called up Donald Fagen of Steely Dan only to receive a curt F\u2011bomb when they mentioned the Y-word.<\/p>\n With a chuckle, Cross explains that this was just \u201cDonald being Donald\u201d, adding that Steely Dan have done well from the yacht-rock boom and the popularity of dedicated channels such as SiriusXM\u2019s Yacht Rock Radio, which \u201ccelebrates the smooth\u2011sailing soft rock from the late Seventies and early Eighties\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cDonald doesn\u2019t like to be interviewed. She tried to interview him,\u201d Cross says. \u201cDonald had lost his wife. If you know Donald, it\u2019s very tongue\u2011in\u2011cheek. But Donald is like us. He thinks it\u2019s all stupid. At the same time he knows how much they are played on SiriusXM and how it helps the music. He has a love\u2011hate relationship with it too.\u201d<\/p>\n He names Steely Dan\u2019s 1977 album, Aja, as a huge influence on both his songwriting and his outlook on life. He isn\u2019t alone: the record\u2019s fusion of flawless musicianship, state-of-the-art recording techniques, jazz sophistication and pop melodies makes it a foundational text for yacht rock. Or, as Rolling Stone put it, \u201can awesomely clean and calculated mutation of various rock, pop and jazz idioms\u201d. <\/p>\n Given its importance, Cross was delighted to be approached by Fagen several years later to guest on one of Steely Dan\u2019s post-Aja LPs. He ultimately turned the offer down, as he was too intimidated. (Fagen had a reputation for not suffering fools \u2013 a definition he frequently appeared to extend to accomplished musicians who knew what they were doing.) <\/p>\n It was the best of both worlds, Cross believes. He was flattered to have been approached by the group, but he didn\u2019t have to go through the potential stress of working with them.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re brilliant \u2013 Walter, God bless his soul,\u201d he says, referring to Walter Becker, Fagen\u2019s partner in yacht rock, who died in 2017. \u201cAja was such a massive influence on all of us. It changed us \u2013 how we approach record\u2011making.\u201d<\/p>\n Cross is less enamoured of another Donald: he was once offered $1 million to play at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump\u2019s Bond-villain Florida lair. He politely declined. <\/p>\n \u201cI definitely struggled with Donald Trump. I didn\u2019t vote for him. I try not to get too political. I think he\u2019s pretty much destroyed our country,\u201d the singer says. \u201cI don\u2019t wish him any ill will, but I certainly wish he would not be president and that we could try to reset the clock, because every day it\u2019s just getting worse and worse.\u201d<\/p>\n Cross has had his own difficulties. He contracted Covid in April 2020, which led to a diagnosis of Guillain-Barr\u00e9 syndrome, a disorder in which the immune system attacks the nerves. It left him temporarily paralysed; for a while it was touch-and-go whether he would be able to play the guitar again.<\/p>\n He is now able to tour, something that would have seemed a miracle a few years ago. It\u2019s one of the reasons he has been starting shows with All Right, an upbeat anthem that assures the listener that after the dark will come the dawn (\u201cIt\u2019s all right \/ I think we\u2019re gonna make it\u201d).<\/p>\n \u201cPeople would call me, and I was in intensive care,\u201d he says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t see anyone [because of Covid]. I\u2019d be on the phone with people, and they would say, \u2018Can you still sing?\u2019 And I told them, \u2018Hey, I\u2019ve had a lovely, wonderful life of singing. All I want to do is walk and get out of here.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u201cI really didn\u2019t think about that stuff any more. I thought that was probably over. I was wanting to get out of the hospital, get therapy, get to walk again, which I have.\u201d<\/p>\n Cross says that he has been talking \u201ca little bit of politics\u201d on the current tour. But not too much. Whatever people want to call his music, be that \u201cyacht rock\u201d or simply great pop, he knows that it functions as a refuge for many of his fans. A place to go and forget their troubles, like the narrator in Sailing or the guy in his other big anthem, Ride Like the Wind, skipping town and hoping to make it to Mexico.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look at what\u2019s going on in Iran, all the troubles in the world, certainly in my country, which is a mess \u2026 people come to a show to escape all that. They don\u2019t want to think about their problems. People know what\u2019s going on in the world. They don\u2019t need you to remind them. They want to escape \u2013 sail away, if you will. They want to go to a different place and enjoy themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Christopher Cross is at the Bord G\u00e1is Energy Theatre<\/a>, Dublin, on Sunday, May 24th, and Tuesday, May 26th; Ulster Hall<\/a>, Belfast, on Monday, May 25th; TF Royal<\/a>, Castlebar, Co Mayo, on Wednesday, May 27th; and Gleneagle Arena<\/a>, Killarney, Co Kerry, on Thursday, May 28th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christopher Cross didn\u2019t know whether to be amused or annoyed the first time he encountered the term \u201cyacht…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[8170,212948,112314,356,198290,18,117,28937,10434,19,17,27911,7250,106793,7012,132093],"class_list":["post-487856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-billie-eilish","tag-burt-bacharach","tag-david-crosby","tag-donald-trump","tag-duran-duran","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-fleetwood-mac","tag-grammy-awards","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-joni-mitchell","tag-madonna","tag-motley-crue","tag-oscars","tag-steely-dan"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116584879598578668","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}