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Michael McDonald: My Life in 15 Songs

In the early Eighties, Michael McDonald was such an omnipresent force in the music industry that he inspired one of the greatest sketches on SCTV. It stars a bearded Rick Moranis as McDonald, who frantically parks his vehicle at a studio and comically races in and out of the room just in time to sing backing vocals on Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like the Wind.” His signature voice — those immeasurably deep, blissful pipes — echo through the control room. 

The zany sketch was grounded in truth, since McDonald was indeed absurdly busy when it aired, juggling his commitments to the Doobie Brothers, guest spots with Steely Dan, James Ingram, Kenny Loggins, and more, and cutting songs for his 1982 debut solo LP, If That’s What It Takes. Throughout the decades after that, McDonald never really left the pop cultural landscape. The sketches continued, with McDonald even joining in on the joke. In 2005’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin, electronic store employee Paul Rudd explodes on his boss, Jane Lynch, about “Yah Mo B There” incessantly playing on the television sets. “If I hear ‘Yah Mo B There’ one more time, I’m going to yah mo burn this place to the ground,” he tells her.

Talking about the Judd Apatow film now, McDonald answers with a typically chill, level-headed response: “I have to be honest, I thought it was hysterical,” he says. “When you get to a certain point in your career and your music becomes less relevant, your pathetic comic value might come in handy. And that was that moment for me. Paul Rudd actually stopped me in the airport, and we were both rushing to different flights. And he goes, ‘I hope you weren’t offended by my performance in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.’ And I said, ‘Absolutely not. It was great. I still laugh about it when I think about it.’” 

McDonald, whom Rolling Stone once described as a man who “could sing the New York telephone book and break your heart,” has had quite a busy year in 2024. The yacht rock legend recently released his excellent memoir, What a Fool Believes, co-written with Paul Reiser, and he’s back on the road with the Doobie Brothers, celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary. (He also reveals there’s a new Doobies album on the way.) And on Friday, he’ll appear in HBO’s Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, which traces the history and legacy of the genre. 

With all of these retrospective projects, compiling a list of key songs in his career was no sweat. “It took me a minute, because I wanted to make sure they had some meaning to my gradual evolution as a person,” McDonald tells us on a recent morning over Zoom, holding a cup of coffee in his Santa Barbara home. “It’s funny. It’s all gone by so quickly. When we talk about things that seem like yesterday, we realize that 30 years goes by in a flash if you’re not careful.” 

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