Ask any two music fans what counts as yacht rock and there’s bound to be an argument.

Does Steely Dan count? (Absolutely.) What about Hall & Oates? (No, East Coast too.)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the term “yacht rock” did not yet exist. But everyone knew the music of the Doobie Brothers, Toto and Christopher Cross – who won the Grammys in 1980 with their dazzling ballad “Sailing.”

These acts topped the charts at a time when, alongside the Eagles’ country hits, sophisticated production, gentle melodies and skillful editing dominated the radio waves. That would all change when MTV crashed the scene. Suddenly, tracks like “What a Fool Believes” and “Africa” were relegated to the uncool “soft rock” heap. After the rise of Madonna and Michael Jackson, some of the earlier musicians moved to soundtracks, such as Kenny Loggins with the Top Gun hit “Danger Zone.”

More than two decades later, in 2005, comedians JD Ryznar and Steve Huey retroactively coined a term for the genre with their tongue-in-cheek web series “Yacht Rock.” With its lo-fi aesthetic, the show reimagined musicians like Kenny Loggins and Jimmy Buffett working to create the jazzy sounds that were reminiscent of a possibly cocaine-fueled yacht party. Of course, the music itself played a huge role in each episode. The series eventually sparked a yacht rock renaissance, spawning three Sirius XM stations and tribute bands like Yachtley Crew.

One Gen-X convert was director Garret Price, whose film “Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary” premieres Friday as part of HBO’s Music Box series. Price had previously taken on a darker story with another part of the series, “Woodstock ’99”. This time, he wanted to explore a brighter moment in music history — and how the oldies his parents loved gained a new, younger fan base.

“People always romanticize the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and Carly Simon — the troubadour scene,” says Price, editor of the Prime Video miniseries “Daisy Jones & the Six,” which tells a Fleetwood Mac-esque vision of 1970s L.A “But there’s this whole other scene with Michael McDonald and Christopher Cross and Steely Dan and the Toto boys that I don’t think gets as much recognition,” he says.

Luckily, Price had recently met Cross’s daughter – who happens to be best friends with ex-Doobie brother Michael McDonald’s daughter. Madison Cross brought up the idea for the Doc when she told Price that her father wasn’t a fan of the nickname, although Michael McDonald found it amusing.

Price set out to interview the main figures of yacht rock to find out what they thought. “I always wanted to stay with Mount Rushmore – Steely Dan, Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins and Toto,” he says.

At first, Cross says he found the newly invented phrase “a bit cheesy.” But now the “Ride Like the Wind” singer says, “Anything that can bring some lightness into this world, I’m happy to do.”

Price says the others mostly agreed: “They’ve done it – they understand that this has given their music a second life, and it introduces them to a legion of new fans.”

The exception? The infamous miser and co-founder of Steely Dan, Fagen, who initially did not respond to his advances.

After several months, Steely Dan’s longtime manager Irving Azoff told Price that Fagen would call him sometime in the next few weeks. “Be ready for the shot,” Azoff told him.

Finally, Fagen called and Price asked him if he would take part in the documentary, explaining that it was about “Yacht Rock.” The reaction, as shown in the film, is short, profane and 100% purely Fagen.

He may not have wanted to go on camera, “but at the same time he licensed all his music to me. I think it’s kind of a wink,” Price says.

Why is the inclusion of Steely Dan in the genre so controversial?

“I think it’s hard for people to confuse the man who wrote ‘Sailing’ with the man who wrote ‘Peg,'” says Price, referring to the debate over whether the intellectual Steely Dan was the same should be associated with the gentle rock of Cross or Poco.

Whatever their opinion of today’s label, the bands in Price’s Mount Rushmore share a common DNA. “Basically it has its roots in R&B, soul, funk, jazz and black music. And it all took place in Southern California, within this ecosystem of studios with the session people,” he says.

And the band continues to have an impact: Modern artists like Questlove, Thundercat and Mac deMarco describe in the documentary how these jazzy pop songs influenced their own sound. Thundercat even recruited McDonald and Loggins to contribute to his 2017 song “Show You the Way.”

“These are white musicians who were influenced by black music. “They tried to take what they loved about it and usher in a new era of pop music,” says Price. “When hip-hop discovers this music of the late ’70s, it makes a lot of sense to start sampling with revolutionary artists like De La Soul and Warren G, who explored these funky aspects of this music.”

It’s fitting, he says, that “Yacht Rock” premieres the day after Thanksgiving, when families are looking for cross-generational entertainment.

“Yes, there is humor in it, but also awe, love and respect.”