 The song was recorded in 1979, utilizing the 3M Digital Recording System, making it one of the first digitally recorded songs to chart.In his Grammy acceptance speech, Cross acknowledged "Sailing" as his favorite song on the album and that originally it was not meant to be a single.The song was later identified as an archetype of the style that later became known as yacht rock (Cross and similar artists referred to the style as the West Coast sound at the time).