My Top 10 Steely Dan Tracks

I recently read Alex Pappadamas and Joan LeMay’s excellent book Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Soul Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. It is among Our Band Could be Your Life and Rip it Up and Start Again as my favorite music books I have read, examining the band on a song by song basis— exploring the story behind the songs and the stories within them. Pappadamas’s words are astute and well-researched and LeMay’s paintings are full of beautiful character.

The Dan are a band that have received a critical re-evaluation in recent years, I’m sure if you are a former Twitter user like myself you have at least experienced some second-hand exposure to the cultish nature of the group that has developed among millennials and early zoomers. They have always been well-regarded, but much like Dylan, Springsteen, or Grateful Dead they have inspired pockets of ultra-chic internet appreciation.

It’s not hard to see why, I don’t need to explain to you the appeal. If you read this blog, I am sure you are well familiar with their pristinely produced pieces of jazz-rock with a literary bent, typically from the point of view of losers, deadbeats, and degenerates— it is equal parts Nabokov and Horace Silver. So, I am going to throw my hat into the Dan discourse and try to pick my 10 favorite Steely Dan tunes.

10. Josie

Arguably their funkiest tune, the album closer from Aja is probably the Dan song you could easiest play at some kind of party and not get thrown off the balcony and killed like that guy who tried to play Aphex Twin at the function.

9. King of the World

The apocalyptic closer from Countdown to Ecstasy has always been a song that I find wonderful. Even well before I was fully Dan-pilled, I remember playing this on my radio show in college (I would always end the show with an excellent album closer). In Quantum Criminals, Pappadamas makes the astute observation that this sonically sounds like a prelude to Stereolab’s output in the 90s. The funniest part: our protagonist looks at old newspapers and complains about the pre-apocalyptic crime. I’m not sure if you’ve looked outside recently, but it’s at least a little comforting to know that some things never change among the paranoiacs of our society.

8. Daddy Don’t Live in That New York City No More

Another groove-heavy cut from Katy Lied, an underrated addition to the group’s discog often waved off by Walter and Donald due to the supposed production disaster that ensued during its creation. “Daddy” is about the death/migration of a NYC-based dirtbag protagonist who drives around in his El Dorado while sipping on his booze from a paper sack for dinner.

7. Do It Again

Can’t Buy a Thrill is an excellent album but one I find a little overrated, everything said and done. I don’t think it has to do with the popularity of the songs– most of their classic rock radio staples are on this album– I think it has to do with the relative lack of group identity. The songs with David Palmer on vocals are excellent, but I almost don’t fully consider them Dan tracks because of Donald’s absence on vocals. All of this is just nitpicking a great and classic album. My favorite cut from it is the Latin-flavored and western iconography laden “Do It Again”, which is a hell of a statement as a first single and first album opener.

6. Hey Nineteen

Perhaps the Dan song I find the most psychologically rich, this Gaucho hit features an early 30s former fraternity man hitting on a nineteen year old woman in the most self-reflexive way ever— mourning the fact she doesn’t know who Aretha Franklin is. Basically, it’s if Homer’s existential crisis when his kids’ friends don’t know about Grand Funk Railroad was done by a Matthew McCougnahey in Dazed and Confused (or Nabokov) style perv.

5. The Caves of Altamira

Maybe the least demented and most earnest Dan track, this is a mammoth (no pun intended) song about memory and nostalgia. There is a solid case to be made for this soaring song’s horn outro to be maybe the finest moment in the group’s discography.

4. Kid Charlamagne

This epic about the death of the 60s counter-culture as told through the rise and fall of an acid chemist is maybe my favorite Dan tune topic-wise. Naturally, I am drawn to this song, as someone who had their mind permanently changed when I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and its “wave” passage at age 15. The opener on The Royal Scam has had a second cultural life as a famous sample on the brilliant musician turned rancid reactionary Kanye West’s song “Champion”. But you already know this.

3. My Old School

This Countdown track recalls the semi-autobiographical tale of Walter and Donald and friends getting drug-busted at Bard College, which was, fun fact, orchestrated by Watergate plumber G Gordon Liddy. This smash single only reached number 63 on the charts, but lives much deeper than many forgotten chart toppers from 1973. I have heard this song at Royal Farms gas pumps and my dad claims that the instrumental portions of this song were used during the sign-off of Orioles broadcasts during their 1983 World Series winning season. I choose to believe that they will win another World Series when MASN pays up and uses another Dan song for this purpose. I will take applications for which song in the comments.

2. Glamour Profession

I had an acquaintance once describe this song as everything the Dan were building towards in the studio in their initial run. I agree. This seven-plus minute behemoth tracks the glitz and glamor of late 70s coke dealers and their high profile clients, including multiple basketball stars. The two standout portions of this track: the very eerie piano solo midway through which still gives me goosebumps and the resolution which sees our hero (or heroes) eating Szechuan dumplings at a Chinese restaurant following the deal. The latter of which certainly seems like a “vibe”, but has a sort of fleeting sense of inevitability to it. The deal is done, but beneath the sense of relief is a foreboding tone– the idea that this could all get very hairy very quickly. Gaucho came out the same month that Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, and Nancy Reagan would begin her anti-drug crusade.

1. Deacon Blues

I mean, yeah, it really couldn’t be anything else. This is it. It has it all, folks: longshot jazz musician aspirations, languid and bittersweet sex with housewives, drinking and driving to death, and a self-appointed antonym nickname— University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide are a bunch of winners so call me Deacon Blues instead, says The Expanding Man. The biggest twist of this song, however, is that it’s likely told from the perspective of a wannabe, from someone who is imagining himself succumbing to the tragic life of the jazz musician, I mean, he has to learn how to play the saxophone. But despite that, you feel this character’s desire and ideation on a spiritual level, and that’s why this band is so special. One of my favorite jokes of this song: it has a killer sax solo (courtesy of session musician Pete Christlieb) for being a song about someone who doesn’t know how to play the sax.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Pearl of the Quarter

Maybe the final song out, this underrated New Orleans tear-jerker is their most country styled tune about a man recounting his long lost love— a prostitute named Louise (who Pappademas argues has forgotten our narrator long ago). Another pathetic protagonist, but this one is given deeper empathy than most other Dan characters.

Show Biz Kids

The Dan take on LA weirdos in this cynical barnburner.

Don’t Take Me Alive

A nebbish intellectual gets into a stand-off with the cops after killing his pops and threatens to blow himself and everyone else to smithereens. Has one of the best guitar solos in their discog.

Peg

A perfect single. Somehow not in the top 10.

Tune Out Of Mind

One of the bounciest songs about heroin addiction.

Negative Girl

Maybe my favorite song from their sturdy reunion albums?

Rikki Don’t Lose that Number

Pretzel Logic is far and away my least favorite of their original run from 72-80, which is more a testament to their high quality standard than an indictment on the album. Even in its half-formed state, there are plenty of highs including one of their better singles– Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.

Doctor Wu

Great chorus and great Minutemen cover.

Only a Fool Would Say That

Beatniks take on hippie idealists on this Can’t Buy A Thrill track, which I’ve seen theorized as a pessimistic takedown of John Lennon’s “Imagine”. I’ve also decided this is the last song I will include in this.

Your Favorite Steely Dan Song

Yes! This is so you don’t get any ideas and get mad at me. Your favorite song that wasn’t included, it’s right here! In the honorable mentions! Is it Black Cow? Is it Everybody’s Gone to the Movies (great song, but you are a sicko if this is the case). Is it Midnite Cruiser? Here it is.