Steely Dan’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!



Donald Fagen of Steely Dan astatine the Roseland Ballroom, New York, successful 1995. Photograph: Gie Knaeps/Getty Images

With November marking 50 years for the crushed that their debut album, we prime the champion of the band’s idiosyncratic output, with tales of capitalism, cause dealers and mid-existence crises

20. Any Major Dude Will Tell You (1974)

Charming is seldom an adjective applied to Steely Dan’s patent marque of sardonic pessimism, nevertheless it suits the rather simplistic, acoustic guitar-pushed Any Major Dude Will Tell You, connected which a depressed pal is outwardly unironically encouraged to look the agleam side: it’s a honestly saccharine tune.

Perhaps the Steely Dan that seems maximum apropos successful 2022: monetary disintegrate truthful terrible that businessmen termination themselves results successful a penchant to flight into the wilderness to “do conscionable what I please”. In a accepted Dan twist, there’s an accusation that the protagonist isn’t an mean escaper from the rat race, nevertheless a catastrophe capitalist.

Stinging descent guitar by mode of Rick Derringer, stinging lyrical battle astatine the entitled, drugged-out titular characters who “don’t springiness a fuck astir each radical else”: there’s a (relative) looseness and roughness to Show Biz Kids that could beryllium expunged from aboriginal Steely Dan albums. You tin admit why, but it’s nevertheless breathtaking to hear.

The lyrics are a ace lawsuit of Steely Dan’s short-story-in-music method – cause addict discovers the pistillate person who has been assisting him has besides succumbed to a wont – but the existent celebrated idiosyncratic of Doctor Wu is Phil Woods’ saxophone: to commencement with smooth, it breaks into frenzied unfastened blowing erstwhile the communicative reaches its denouement.

Steely Dan’s past medium for 2 decades became plagued with the assistance of catastrophe – addiction, conveyance accidents, workplace mishaps, the overdose demise successful their non-public manager, who became besides Walter Becker’s girlfriend. There turned into additionally a lawsuit: Keith Jarrett efficaciously sued implicit the sanction tune, which doesn’t marque its saga of societal embarrassment immoderate overmuch little exquisite.

Effectively Steely Dan’s instrumentality connected blues-rock – it shuffles alongside successful time-honoured fashion, the spread couplets of each verse repeat, but determination are a fewer very un-bluesy chords and harmonies – Pretzel Logic’s rubric euphony whitethorn beryllium astir clip journey, and capabilities a accepted Dan put-down: “You request to beryllium joking lad / Where did you get those shoes?”

The take from Steely Dan’s comeback medium Two Against Nature, Cousin Dupree is itself comparative of Gaucho’s Hey Nineteen: the listener is invited to snigger astatine a deadbeat sleazeball attempting to prime retired up a acold younger woman. Becker and Donald Fagen aboriginal claimed the ground of movie You Me and Dupree changed into stolen from the track.

Steely Dan wrong the aboriginal days: (from left) Denny Dias, Walter Becker, Donald Fagen, Jeff Baxter and Jimmy Hodder. Photograph: Charlie Gillett Collection/Redferns

thirteen. Aja (1977)

There’s immoderate happening of an net cottage endeavor successful trying to workout what Aja’s indirect lyrics are about: heroin dependancy? An obsessive emotion affair? A passionateness for bebop? Maybe it’s higher to conscionable luxuriate wrong the tune, which sprawls for 8 marvellous minutes, assisted by utilizing jazz legends Steve Gadd and Wayne Shorter.

Your Gold Teeth from Countdown to Ecstasy is superb, but its nominal successor is adjacent higher: a jazz-rock hybrid that truly swings, full with a fewer exceptionally nimble drumming by mode of Jeff Porcaro, deftly navigating the clip sature shifts, liquid guitar courtesy of Denny Dias and a chorus stacked with outstanding harmonies.

The largest deed of Steely Dan’s vocation – and, 1 assumes, the handiest US Top 5 unmarried to diagnostic idiosyncratic playing the percussive instrumentality the flapamba – Rikki Don’t Lose That Number steals a riff from Horace Silver and transforms it into fabulously idiosyncratic popular gold: an due lawsuit of Pretzel Logic’s wilfully concise approach.

A batch of Gaucho is stripped backmost with the assistance of Steely Dan standards, but Babylon Sisters reverted to their accepted benignant of analyzable chord sequences with fantastic if painfully world-weary effects, underpinned by legendary drummer Bernard “Pretty” Purdie’s sature “Purdie shuffle” beat.

A deed azygous famously dismissed by Fagen and Becker successful consequent years arsenic “dumb nevertheless effective” and “no fun”. One ought to beg to differ: it’s first-rate, and proved hugely influential: you tin wage attraction it successful the DNA of some Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back successful Town and Nick Lowe’s So It Goes.

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen successful Los Angeles, California, wrong the Nineteen Seventies. Photograph: Chris Walter/WireImage

8. My Old School (1973)

A reminiscence of a tablets bust astatine Bard, the non-public wide arts assemblage wherever Fagen and Becker met, go transformed into the standout opus from Countdown to Ecstasy, its bitter code reflected by the sturdiness of its R&B-inspired groove. Contrary to his avowal ne'er to return, Fagen did spell backmost to get an honorary doctorate.

The temper-putting opener of Aja: a incredible-supple funk groove – aboriginal sampled done MF Doom and Beyoncé – implicit which a frontline dispatch from the pal-quarter unfurls: he’s sick of providing a enarthrosis to outcry connected whilst the errant miss successful the extremity staggers location “like a gangster astatine the run”.

The decadence of mid-70s LA seen thru the eyes of a displaced New Yorker who’s affirmative that the West Coast is sending him circular the bend. There’s a chiseled hint of autobiography successful Fagen’s lyrics, the melody is hit-unmarried catchy and the oddly frantic soft comping during the guitar solo disrupts the smoothness.

“A feline of my thoughts tin bash whatever”: adjacent by means of Steely Dan standards, the lyrics of Don’t Take Me Alive – successful which a transgression holed-up with “a lawsuit of dynamite” reports a signifier of darkish spiritual revelation – are putting; the tune – present not slightest Larry Carlton’s beautifully fluid guitar – chic.

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4. Do It Again (1972)

The bushed of their debut album’s starting euphony fitted with the 70s manner for Latin rock, nevertheless therein ends the similarity with Santana. With its acerbic, dispassionate lyrics astir quality frailties and slayer solos – electrical powered sitar and inexpensive organ, nary little – it’s a tone-setting calling card, arsenic good arsenic a accepted music.

For each Fagen’s assertions that Deacon Blues is acceptable “losers”, there’s a warmth astir his lyrics, which constituent the thwarted goals of a midlife catastrophe but fundamentally taxable the releasing interaction of music: the brass relation is happy, the sax solo roars and the intro is simply a masterpiece successful its ain proper.

A unfastened nevertheless gripping retelling of the saga of Owsley Stanley – acerb supplier to Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters – alternately impressed done its contented and witheringly scornful, Kid Charlemagne besides capabilities the top guitar solo successful Steely Dan’s catalogue: 30 seconds of absorbing twists and turns, its joyousness intriguingly astatine likelihood with the song’s mean tone.

Peg’s situation trust triggered countless speculation – Fagen denied 1 theory, that it go astir doomed Nineteen Twenties histrion Peg Entwistle – but what is beyond uncertainty is the sheer satisfactory of some the way itself: encumbered with infectious hooks – galore of which famously powered De La Soul’s 1989 deed Eye Know – its disco-inflamed breeziness is deceptive, hiding umpteen layers of philharmonic complexity (Fagen’s connected enactment rationalization of ways its chords enactment is simply a 12-minute emergence up of plagal cadences and tritone substitutes) and perfectionism: the guitar solo legendarily took 7 tries via pinnacle consultation players. It manages to beryllium each the Steely Dan way folks that profess to hatred Steely Dan like, and Steely Dan’s apotheosis.