Christopher Cross’s self-titled debut album cover, featuring a pink flamingo against a pastel sunset and green sea.

Christopher Cross: Yacht Rock, MTV & More Cheekbones

October 7, 2026

We live in a world of firsts. Everybody knows the first black baseball player in the major leagues was Jackie Robinson, but the second, Larry Doby, was important too. The Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first video on MTV and it was prophetic for the effect the channel would have on the music industry. Pat Benatar’s “You Better Run” was the second video, the first by a woman, and Pat Benatar highlighted the flip side of The Buggles’ song. Video could also give birth to a star. Particularly a telegenic one like Benatar. Did you know that Benatar won four straight Grammy Awards for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance from 1981 (The Birth of MTV) to 1984? Crimes of Passion, “Fire and Ice”, Shadows of the Night”, and “Love Is a Battlefield”. She was nominated every year from 1986 to 1990 as well. Benatar had some great songs to be sure, but she also looked the part, which in the MTV age was just as important.

Just as MTV created Pat Benatar it destroyed a host of other bands, like REO Speedwagon. REO Speedwagon’s “Take It on the Run” was the ninth video played on MTV and the first concert video. It was interrupted after 12 seconds due to technical difficulties. Despite early play on MTV, the channel would drop REO Speedwagon and other 1970s staples like Kansas and The Doobie Brothers because of the difficulties of their look. They just did not fit the image that MTV was pushing, which was younger and sleeker. Which meant not more cowbell, but more cheekbones. Think Duran Duran.

But the one artist that made The Buggles true prophets more than any other was Christopher Cross. Only two artists have won Grammy Awards in the four major categories (Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist) in a single year. The most recent was Billie Eilish in 2020. But the first to do it was Christopher Cross in 1981, the year MTV started. His self-titled album was huge. But so was Christopher Cross. They say the camera adds ten pounds. The MTV videos added about twenty more and Christopher Cross was out. In the 1980s, coke was in and pudge was out.

This was not always the case. At the birth of rock and roll, Fats Domino was one of the most successful artists of the initial wave. At Woodstock, three of the best performances were by fat guys: Bob Hite of Canned Heat, Leslie West of Mountain, and the fat guy that led Sha-Na-Na. Lou loves himself some Bob Hite and Leslie West. Take a look at Canned Heat at Monterey and then look at them at Woodstock. Holy shit. Drugs, man. Bob Hite was cool. If Pete Townshend smacked Abbie Hoffman with a guitar at Woodstock, Bob Hite shared a cigarette with a fan who rushed the stage. Bob Hite was a good dude.

Lou also has time for Leslie West. West always reminds Lou of the scene in Airplane when one of the passengers says she wants some light reading and is handed a leaflet of Jewish sports legends. West is a fat Jewish guitar legend and Lou loves him for it. Lou has an embarrassing number of records involving Leslie West. Most if not all of the Mountain stuff as well as West, Bruce and Laing records. When Lou wants to get busy with a 12-pack of pounders, he puts on Canned Heat and Mountain LPs. Hite and West are guys you can drink with. And they have the bodies to prove it.

As rock became more corporate, image conscious, and profit-driven, the industry made a concerted decision to cut the fat. For every Aretha Franklin and Adele there are hundreds if not thousands of Pat Benatars. It is no coincidence that the early days of rap featured fat guys, but as rap became a corporate industry and the rapper became an entrepreneur of fashion and lifestyle, the fat dudes disappear. There is no place for Biz Markie in the Jay-Z rap universe. For what it is worth, the Diabolical One, the Diabetical One is crucially important in the history of rap music and the end of its golden age in the late eighties/early nineties. Let Lou break it down for you:

Biz Markie
Became rap
Legally speaking
Sampling as
An act of
Appropriation
Into an act of
Collaboration
But ultimately
As an act of
Legal negotiation

Word to your mother. Rap was much better when it was phat.

It cannot be overstated just how popular Christopher Cross was in the year just before MTV. This is the pinnacle of yacht rock, and it sold tons of albums. “Sailing” was everywhere and in 1981, Cross backed this up with the earworm classic “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” for the Dudley Moore movie Arthur about a drunk millionaire. The song won the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Arthur is one of the worst depictions of an alcoholic in the history of film. Lou was not amused. Historically The Lost Weekend and Days of Wine and Roses are listed aa key alcoholic movies. Meg Ryan in When a Man Loves a Woman gets mentioned. There are tons of them. Lou has a love/hate relationship with Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. This is a great movie, and Elisabeth Shue does an awesome job in the shopworn role of a hooker with a heart of gold. She should have won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress that year.

But the problem Lou has with the movie is Cage’s drinking problem. Lou just doesn’t believe in the levels of consumption. Lou understands he is making a concerted effort to drink himself to death, which he does, but Lou questions whether drinking at that level is even possible. Maybe Lou doesn’t have the drinking problem, he thinks he does. If people drink like that, God bless them. Lou will go slow and steady.

For Lou, few artists do drinking better than Charles Bukowski. Let’s stop for a moment and also praise Bukowski for also being one of the greatest American writers on the topic of work and labor. Bukowski captured dead-end drinking and dead-end jobs like nobody else in literature. In fact, it is Bukowski’s depiction of the blue-collar grind that is his most important contribution to popular culture not his more popular writing on drinking and women. Matt Dillon in Factotum is a great alcoholic as is Mickey Rourke in Barfly. Nobody can swallow paste like I can. Classic. Lou also likes to see Faye Dunaway slumming it. She will never live down Mommie Dearest and the only way Dunaway would ever have appeared in Barfly is having fallen in the career gutter with her incredible and jaw-dropping take on Joan Crawford. Recently, Lou was listening to Wesley Morris on the Bill Simmons podcast talk about Dunaway’s masterful performance in Chinatown. Dunaway may have been a complete nightmare, but she could put on a dream of a performance.

This is all to say that in 1981 Christopher Cross was the biggest man in rock in more ways than one and then MTV went on the air and it was all over for Cross. He shrank out of the spotlight and became something of a punchline. Sad what they do to fat guys. They always make them clowns. Come to The Vogue and give Christopher Cross’s self-titled a spin on your turntable. Get a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s, a large pizza from Finelli’s, and a bunch of beer while you do so. Live large.

— Lou Waxman