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Toto
Toto, formed by a group of top Los Angeles session musicians who'd already played on numerous other artists' hit recordings before forming their own band, brought an unusually high level of collective technical musicianship to their own recordings from the group's earliest work. Their 1982 song "Africa" became one of the most enduringly popular songs of the era, and its unexpected 2010s viral internet resurgence, including numerous cover versions and memes decades after its original release, gave the song a level of continued cultural relevance unusual for a song from that specific era. The band's members' extensive prior session work, having played on recordings for artists including Michael Jackson, Boz Scaggs, and Steely Dan themselves, gave Toto's own recordings a polished, technically accomplished production quality directly reflecting the members' professional studio backgrounds. Toto's combination of genuine technical musicianship, drawn from their members' session musician expertise, and "Africa" specifically becoming one of the most culturally persistent songs of the smooth rock era has made them one of the most recognizable acts associated with the polished late-1970s and early-1980s "yacht rock" sound.
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Christopher Cross
Christopher Cross's 1979 self-titled debut album swept the four major Grammy Awards categories — Album, Record, and Song of the Year, plus Best New Artist — becoming the first album in Grammy history to win all four major awards, an achievement that remains one of the most statistically dominant single-album award sweeps in Grammy history. His single "Sailing," with its smooth, gentle production and nautical lyrical imagery, became one of the songs most directly associated with the later-coined "yacht rock" genre label, its literal boating theme making it a frequently cited archetypal example of the style. Cross's 1981 Academy Award-winning song "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)," co-written with Burt Bacharach for the film Arthur, extended his commercial success into film songwriting, adding an Oscar to his already substantial Grammy collection. His combination of that historic Grammy sweep and his enduring association with "Sailing" specifically as a genre-defining song has made Cross one of the most immediately recognized figures when discussing the smooth, soft-rock "yacht rock" sound of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
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