Steely Dan is a great band that is relatively unknown among modern music listeners, but for any music fan, they are worth checking out. Steely Dan is a rock band that was started by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker in the 1970s. Fagen and Becker would co-write all the songs together. Originally they were an actual band with set members on each instrument, but as the band evolved, only Becker and Fagen remained and they relied on session musicians to get that cool and crisp sound that makes them so good. They started as a rock band but slowly and surely evolved into a jazz-rock fusion band that were perfectionists in the studio.
Their sarcastic and snide lyrics when compared to their smooth music truly make a unique listening experience that you just don’t find in modern music. If anyone reading this is going to listen to Steely Dan, I strongly recommend that you do so using headphones, which will allow you to truly appreciate their excellent sound design and engineering.
Steely Dan released 7 studio albums, not counting live albums, from 1972-1980, and after a 20-year hiatus, they returned with 2 albums in the early 2000s. I will be ranking these albums based on my opinion of which is the best, and just so my readers know, every Steely Dan album is amazing and every album has some real gems on it, but some albums are just more amazing than others.
9. Everything Must Go (2003) Sadly, their +newest album is one of their weakest. This album's production was not as thorough as their other albums, and it shows. It’s very jazzy, which is standard among their later albums, and this writer's favorite song of that album is “The Things I Miss The Most.” The album lacks the soul of their early albums, and that is a problem that applies to their other album from the 2000s.
8. Two Against Nature (2000) While still lacking the same soul and smoothness of their pre-hiatus albums, it is still a great album. My favorite song is “Cousin Dupree,” a classic example of Steely Dan songwriting. This is the only album of Steely Dan that won a Grammy, beating out Radiohead's Kid A and Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP for Album of the Year. When Donald Fagen was asked about how he felt after winning the Grammy, he said, “Tremendous indifference.” This is a solid album but not what we expected after 20 years without new Steely Dan music.
7. The Royal Scam (1976) The first album on our list from Steely Dan's initial run in the 1970s. An excellent album with some classic, weird song topics, like a song about cave paintings (“Caves of Altamira”) and a song about Owsley Stanley, an audio engineer that worked with bands like the Grateful Dead and made LSD on the side (“Kid Charlemagne”). One of the album’s highlights is guitarist Larry Carlton’s solo work on “Kid Charlemagne.” Carlton’s guitar playing is a classic example of the particular skills and specialties that Steely Dan gets out of the many different session musicians that they used during this period. Steely Dan being a jazz-rock fusion band, this album leans more towards rock while still using jazz elements, and this would be before Steely Dan took a full turn and transformed into a jazz band for their next two albums. My favorite song is “Haitian Divorce.”
6. Pretzel Logic (1974) Steely Dan's last album before they started to rely on session musicians. This is the album where you start to see them embrace more jazz elements and complex song compositions. My favorite song is “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”, one of the few Billboard hits from their discography. This is a song about a time in college when Donald Fagen gave his number to the wife of a professor who never called him back, yet another classic Steely Dan song topic. Other great songs are “Any Major Dude Will Tell You,” one of the few optimistic songs made by Steely Dan, and “Parker’s Band,” a song about one of Fagen and Becker’s jazz idols, Charlie “Bird” Parker. This is also the last album that the band played while touring. They preferred to hone their skills in the studio rather than to tour. After this album, it was just Fagen and Becker left with the studio musicians, although they still brought in past members of the group to perform on their future albums.
5. Can’t Buy A Thrill (1972) The world's first introduction to Steely Dan, and what a great album to start with. While strictly a rock album at this point in the Steely Dan timeline, you can see the seeds of jazz being planted in the music. For example, the bongos on the first song on the album, “Do It Again,” tell you that this is not like other bands in the 70s. One of the most popular Steely Dan songs comes from this album: “Reelin In The Years”, with an excellent solo from Elliot Randall. My favorite song on the album is :Brooklyn Owes The Charmer Under Me” It features soulful lyrics sung by David Palmer, a singer who was only with the band for this album. He also sang on Dirty Work because Fagen had stage fright, so their producers hired a singer to alleviate his burden when they performed live. The guitar work from Denny Dias and Jeff “Skunk” Baxter are staples of the album, and this album was a great first introduction to Steely Dan.
4. Aja (1977) Steely Dan's magnum opus without a doubt. The audio design and sound engineering is second to none, and this is their best-produced album from a sound design standpoint. It’s a jazzy album with songs about drunk losers (“Deacon Blues”) and The Odyssey (“Home At Last”) to name a few more examples of Steely Dan's strange song topics. This album is often considered to be their best, and it is an excellent album, but one of the downsides is that it only has seven songs; however, a plus is that a lot of those songs are over six minutes and are quite an experience to listen to. An original member of Steely Dan makes a reappearance on the album on the title track, “Aja.” This was another album that was filled to the brim with different session musicians, such as Chuck Reiner, Bernard Purdie, and Steve Gadd. These session musicians help to add to the crisp sound of the album. My favorite song of the album is “Josie,” a song about a popular girl in a blue-collar neighborhood who is the desire of all the men in town.
3. Countdown To Ecstasy (1973) Steely Dan's second album and a definite improvement to their first album. While they spent less time on this album because it was recorded while they toured, it doesn’t show. They still have that refined sound but a little less so. For example, the distorted guitar on “Show Biz Kids” is nothing like other Steely Dan songs and feels almost like a different band. But that’s what makes Steely Dan so special: you see them evolve as a band into something completely unique. There is not a song I don't like on this album. My favorites include “My Old School”, a song about a drug bust at Bard College, where Fagen and Becker met, and “The Boston Rag”, a song about bringing back the old days. One final highlight is “Your Gold Teeth,” a song about giving up your material possessions and gambling on life. It is the only song to have a sequel on a later album.
2. Katy Lied (1975) Deciding between spots two and three was a very hard decision to make. I decided to favor Katy Lied because from a technical aspect this is a better album. This was the first time Steely Dan used session musicians, and the listening experience is nothing short of magical, from the xylophone/marimba backing “Everyone’s Gone To The Movies,” one of the darkest Steely Dan songs if you listen to the lyrics, to the sequel song, “Your Gold Teeth II,” which is even better than the first. Like “Countdown To Ecstasy,” I feel that every song on this album is exquisite, and there is not a weak song on the whole record. This is a very underrated album of theirs and I feel that it deserves to be much higher on everyone’s list.
1. Gaucho (1980) The greatest Steely Dan album. It went through production hell due to a whole song being accidentally deleted by an intern, Walter Becker’s struggle with his addiction to heroin at the time, and Fagen’s perfectionism, but you wouldn’t be able to tell if you listened to the album. While many consider Aja to be a better album, I would argue that this album has a better mood all around. Listening to this album at night, taking in all the unique sounds from all sides, you can see why the pair was so strict about how they wanted the songs to sound. It pays off exponentially. Some of my favorite songs are “Time Out Of Mind,” a song about smoking heroin, the title track, “Gaucho,” a song about loser junkie friends, and “Babylon Sisters.” a song about prostitutes. All the songs have the standard topics that you’ve come to expect. Songs about losers and abusers are set to smooth music to create a sense of irony. After this album, Steely Dan would hang up their hat for 20 years before returning in 2000 with ‘Two Against Nature, although they did release the live album, Alive in America, in 1995.
While Steely Dan was in hiatus and even after they returned, Becker and Fagen both worked on solo albums with the help of one another. Fagen was more prolific with four albums released while Becker only had two. Fagen's solo albums are better in my opinion, especially The Nightfly, released in 1982. If I had ranked the pair's solo work as well, The Nightfly might have been the best of all their albums. My favorite song from the album is “I.G.Y.” Interestingly, Fagen’s solo work, especially The Nightfly and Kamakiriad (released in 1993) are way more optimistic and cheery than Steely Dan's ironic and dark lyrics. Fagen also released Morph the Cat in 2006 and Sunken Condos in 2012. Becker released 11 Tracks of Whack in 1994 and Circus Money in 2008. If you enjoy any of Steely Dan's music you will likely also enjoy their solo work as well.
In conclusion, Steely Dan is one the best and most underrated bands of all time. They are a mix of jazz, rock, and R&B and feature slavishly sophisticated studio production. They are a band whose dark, sarcastic, and often cryptic lyrics celebrate users, losers, and abusers. Steely Dan is an absolute must-listen for anyone who calls themselves a fan of music.
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