Sailing

This tranquil classic evokes sailing on the open sea, leaving any troubles on the shore. In a Songfacts interview with Christopher Cross, he told the story of the song: "I was just at home sitting in this cheap apartment, sitting at the table. I remember coming up with the verse and chorus, and the lyrics to the first verse of the chorus all came out. These tunings, like Joni [Mitchell] used to say, they get you in this sort of trance, so all that came out at once: 'It's not far down to paradise...' The chorus just sort of came out. So I got up and wandered around the apartment just thinking, 'Wow, that's pretty f--kin' great.' I just thought, 'That's really cool.' So then I sat down and had to try to come up with other stuff to make the rest of the song, but I thought I had something there. Then it took about two years before I had a bridge to that song, because the modality of the modal tuning thing, it gets pretty linear, and you've got to be careful. There are writers - I won't mention who - whose songs can get kind of boring because everything's this modality. So I knew I needed to lift the song out of that modality in the bridge and make key changes. It took about two years before I came up with the bridge that changes all the keys to where it lifts, but it was a pretty special moment."

Cross wrote this song about his memories sailing every summer with a friend in Texas. It became the paragon of "Yacht Rock," a term used to define a form of easy listening music favored by the rich. And what defines yacht music better than a song about sailing? Eventually, Yacht Rock caught on with the proletariat, and even spawned a cover band, the Yacht Rock Revue, made up of seven members who do it as a full-time job. "Sailing" is pretty much their "Free Bird," and it has a powerful impact on the crowd. "That song is exceptionally smooth," Nicholas Niespodziani of the band told Songfacts. "Everything we do is pretty smooth, but then there's like, a next level of smooth, that's just so vibed out. A lot of times, you can create excitement by being not excited, and that song is the perfect example of that: It's so chilled out that it gets people pretty amped up."

On the Howard Stern radio show, Cross explained that sailing with his friend got him away from the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. Cross said that if the guy had taken him bowling and he enjoyed it, the song could have become "Bowling."