Steely Dan’s Ten Best Songs
At this point in the evolution of popular music, most seventies rock bands have been relegated to the dustbin of history. There may be no shortage of acts selling concert tickets to boomers, and most people over sixty-five can engage in a healthy “Beatles or Stones” debate, but few artists from the decade still resonate with younger audiences. The biggest exception might be Steely Dan, who have been sampled endlessly and who pioneered a detached, hipper-than-thou attitude found in so much modern culture. Cofounders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen married that sensibility to a sound that incorporated their love of jazz into classic rock.
Who would have thought such “funked-up Muzak” would be finding new fans this far along? Steely Dan’s smooth if occasionally soulless studio polish spawned a larger yacht rock movement that’s turned lesser seventies acolytes like Toto and Christopher Cross into icons. They attract both rock and jazz fans; who else used Wayne Shorter of Miles Davis/Weather Report fame and Timothy Schmit from the Eagles on the same album? And their high-end production quality sounds better as audio technology evolves. Lyrically, Donald Fagen said it best: “If we were ahead of our time, it was simply because we grew up with a certain natural ironic stance which later became the norm.” Steely Dan was smarter than you before the Internet made it so easy for people to tell you how much smarter they are than you.
The funniest encapsulation of Steely Dan comes from Charles Shaar Murray: “The end result is like something Stevie Wonder might have concocted if he were white, Jewish, sighted and in the throes of an acute attack of nostalgia for the Kennedy years.” Granted, Murray was actually reviewing The Nightfly, Fagen’s first solo effort, but that record was hardly a huge departure. Shortly after their third album, 1974’s Pretzel Logic, Steely Dan abandoned the notion of being a touring act altogether, a daring anti-commercial stance. Subsequently, their records featured session ringers brought in by co-writers Fagen and Becker for each song and put through exhaustive sessions in search of a perfect solo. Surprisingly, Becker opted to not even play on two of the seven tracks on Aja, the group’s pinnacle.
Steely Dan albums fall into one of three tiers. Their best work–Aja, The Royal Scam, Countdown to Ecstasy and Katy Lied–maintain a sonic theme from the first song to the last. Each album might be slightly different from the others, but its parts fit together like puzzle pieces to form a unified whole. Can’t Buy a Thrill and Pretzel Logic are excellent but more random collections, unsurprising considering the former was the band’s debut with a different lead singer and the latter was the last time they toured. Gaucho gets its own tier: it may be thematically consistent, but it’s more focused on sound quality than song quality, and its creation was followed by the dissolution of the partnership for more than a decade.
Inspired by the recent, long-overdue vinyl reissues of the group’s catalog, including new, more expensive 45 rpm pressings from Analogue Productions’ UHQR (Ultra High Quality Record) series, here in reverse order are the ten best Steely Dan songs. Every track embodies the band’s legacy while avoiding their more cloying inclinations.
#10–”Doctor Wu” (Katy Lied)
Katy Lied is an outlier in the Steely Dan catalog. Perhaps their most subtle work, the 1975 release failed to capitalize on the huge success of its predecessor, Pretzel Logic. The excessively dark lyrics didn’t help. “Black Friday” equated the 1929 stock market crash with a larger societal reckoning, “Everyone’s Gone to the Movies” romanticized showing pornography to children, and “Chain Lightning” found two former Nazis reminiscing about the connection they felt at a Hitler rally. But the first record that found the group operating as more of a collective hinted at the polish later explored with such effectiveness on Aja. “Doctor Wu” speaks of longing for and scoring drugs, as its soft, meditative verses resolve into a lush chorus and an evocative Phil Woods sax solo.
#9–”Time Out Of Mind” (Gaucho)
Steely Dan’s final effort before their extended hiatus included this love letter to heroin. After its release, Walter Becker fell into an extended depression spurred by addiction that culminated in a relocation to Hawaii to reboot his lifestyle. “Time Out Of Mind” is a beautiful, horn-driven song that tries to capture the allure of smack: the anticipation, the act of consumption, and the warm, enveloping buzz. Nothing cryptic about the lyrics here: the song specifically refers to chasing the dragon (e.g. smoking heroin), the silver foil that changes color during the process, and the city in Tibet where the opium originates. Lou Reed’s description in his famous Velvet Underground song is a slow build where the heartbeat quickens as the user reaches their goal; for Steely Dan, the high is defined more by “perfection and grace.”
#8–”The Boston Rag” (Countdown to Ecstasy)
A loping tempo set to a descending guitar line, “The Boston Rag” combines classic Steely Dan elements: cryptic words with references only the songwriters truly get, a killer chorus, and a brief piano interlude leading to a scorching guitar solo by Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. Naturally, “The Boston Rag” is actually set in New York, with references to “Lady Bayside” and Seventh Avenue. When they were still a touring band, Steely Dan had three amazing guitarists: Becker, the more jazz-influenced Denny Dias, and Jeff “Skunk’ Baxter, who like Yacht Rock deity Michael McDonald later joined The Doobie Brothers, and who leans into a distortion level here soon to vanish from the band’s records.
#7–”Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” (Pretzel Logic)
Steely Dan may be the most sampled rock act in history: Beyonce, Ice Cube and De La Soul are among the more than 150 artists that have sampled them. But long before hip hop, they themselves sampled jazz: “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” the first single and track off their third album, starts with a short marimba solo (of course) that dissolves into a piano motif copped from Horace Silver’s “Song For My Father.” The song was the group’s most sophisticated effort up to that point in their search for the ideal jazz-rock hybrid. Contrary to rumors, it’s about a failed romance, not a marijuana cigarette.
#6–”Home At Last” (Aja)
Here’s a track that shows just how much Steely Dan could accomplish with a horn section. With a major assist from Timothy Schmit on background vocals, “Home At Last” is a lyrical recasting of a passage from Homer’s “Odyssey,” but is also easily interpreted as being about two East Coast natives, Becker and Fagen, longing to leave the Los Angeles sun for the home they know better. “Home At Last” is also notable for Walter Becker’s beautiful guitar solo; no matter how much he relied on studio musicians to get the sound he was hearing in his head, sometimes he still had to do it himself.
#5–”Razor Boy” (Countdown to Ecstasy)
After the fiery intro of “Bodhisattva,” 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy settled into more subtle, nuanced fare with this gem. Featuring Victor Feldman’s marimba and an unforgettable chorus, “Razor Boy” is the earliest composition to point towards the grail of Aja. Despite its sad message–whether it’s about the perils of addiction or the dying embers of a relationship is for you to deduce–the harmonies and the melody overpower the melancholy to leave the listener smiling.
#4–”Deacon Blues” (Aja)
The closest Steely Dan ever got to autobiography was this classic track from their most beloved album. Fagen’s vocals inhabit the role of a grizzled veteran coming to grips with his approaching mortality and plotting a path towards contentment. “I cried when I wrote this song, sue me if I play too long” are the most personal lines the pair wrote. The story of an over-the-hill jazz aficionado climaxes with a beautiful sax solo by Pete Christlieb, who recorded it after finishing his day job in The Tonight Show Band. “Deacon Blues” is one of the group’s most beloved tunes and arguably the best way to introduce someone to Steely Dan.
#3–”Show Biz Kids” (Countdown to Ecstasy)
The first single off of Steely Dan’s second album is unlike anything that came before or after. Featuring a Rick Derringer slide guitar solo recorded at Caribou Ranch in Nederland, “Show Biz Kids” is the same loop repeated for four minutes without a chorus, released years before the Talking Heads popularized the concept on Remain in Light. Doomed to fail as a hit because it was so uncommercial, the song was decades ahead of its time, highlighting the crass consumerism of Las Vegas, poking fun at hipster culture and the group’s own fans, and using a rap-style vocal delivery. Long before the phrase “Nepo Baby” entered the lexicon, Steely Dan gave us this earworm.
#2–”The Caves Of Altamira” (The Royal Scam)
Chicago (the group, not the city) and Blood, Sweat and Tears might have blazed trails combining rock with large horn sections, but no one made a big band sound better than Steely Dan. “My Old School” and “Night by Night” are the earliest examples of Dan compositions with horns, but “The Caves Of Altamira” is the best, an irresistible chorus alongside lyrics that imagine a child adventuring into Spain’s famous cave and marveling at 36,000 year-old prehistoric art.
#1–”Aja” (Aja)
Aja–both the album and the song–are peak Steely Dan. By this point the studio was practically a third member of the group. Through its nearly eight-minutes, “Aja” reaches heights Steely Dan hadn’t even attempted before. Its Far Eastern-flavored verses lead into lengthy solos from jazz masters Wayne Shorter (on sax) and Steve Gadd (on drums). No Steely Dan song sounded better or more deftly melded jazz and rock.
Interested in a deeper dive? Donald Fagen’s often hilarious 2013 memoir Eminent Hipsters features a tour diary that finds him in full curmudgeon mode, and 2018’s Major Dudes–A Steely Dan Companion compiles reviews and interviews with Becker and Fagen from the past fifty years. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, “Kid Charlemagne” from The Royal Scam came in at #11.
This was a nice list .However “King of The World” should be onit.
TY very much for your list and even more for your comments, which are refreshingly personal. For myself, there is no need to compose such a list because there is only one best SD song: the next I listen to
Interesting choices
Reeling in the years missing. Black cowvmissing.steelers wheel stuck in the middle with you mostly the same band,this was the start up band name.josie and peg missing. I disagree with your list.
its crazy how dirty youre doing cant buy a thrill, honestly
Should have picked Haitian Divorce.
Deacon Blues not making the top 10! That’s like Michael Jordan not being included in the Mount Rushmore of basketball players
Deacon Blues is #4
While I have to gi you an 8 out of 10, I do think you’ve forgotten a few must haves for the ideal Playlist. Brooklyn, Bad Sneakers, Midnight Crusier and Kid Charlemagne should be added, in my humble opinion.
They forgot about “Babylon Sisters,” my absolute favorite.
I always thought Any World ( That I’m Welcome To) from Katy Lied was always overlooked and vastly underappreciated . ” All night long, we sang that stupid song / And every word we sang I knew was true .” Genius , just Genius.
The best band bar none
If I had a chance to c the eagles or steely Dan
Steely Dan, #1
I have every one of those albums love steely Dan music I wish you’d come out with another album soon
Love the music
You forgot Royal Scam. Really!
Excellent choice for Aja, the best song and album there ever was.
“Any Major Dude” just has to be listed in the top 10. It’s pure musical genius.
My best SD songs of all time (In no particular ranking. They are all freakin great songs)!
The entire Aja Album
Kid Charlemagne
Here in the Western World
Dr. Wu
The entire Gaucho Album
Dirty Work
Any Major Dude Will Tell You
Bad Sneakers
The Cave of Altimera
Do it Again
Don’t Take Me Alive
Haitian Divorce
Only A Fool Would Say That
The Royal Scam
The Fez
Your Gold Teeth
Cousin Dupree
Reeling In The Years
Rikki Don’t Loose That Number
Black Cow, Peg,
This was extremely well written.
My choice for best Steely Dan songs changes every day which is why they have been my favorite artists for the past 43 years.