Steely Dan's 12 greatest songs

Let me get this out of the way right up front. There are no songs from Aja on the following list. Nor are there any from its follow-up Gaucho. I mention this because I am fully aware that Aja – Steely Dan’s sixth album – is beloved by many fans. An equal number of their fans revile it. You can count me in the latter group.

OK – “revile” may be too strong a word. I don’t really hate it, and I do recognize the artistic proficiency and vision that went into its creation. I just don’t like it very much when compared with the five albums that preceded it. For all its pristine jazz-pop inflection, Aja feels lifeless to me. I can listen to “Josie” and “Black Cow” without running from the room, but I can’t find a place for them in my top 12.

They’re not even close. As for the lauded hits – “Peg,” “Deacon Blues,” and the non-album single from that era, “FM” – I find them entirely somniferous (which is the type of word Donald Fagen would find a way to use in a lyric.)

The 12 best songs by Steely Dan

As for Gaucho – well, I don’t know anyone who really likes Gaucho. It’s kind of like Aja’s kid brother. If you like Aja, chances are you like Gaucho – just not as much.

That’s a couple of hundred words dissing later Dan. So let’s get to the good Dan. Because I dearly love the first five albums. Steely Dan roared out of the gate in 1972 with Can’t Buy a Thrill. It yielded two top twenty hits and established a hybrid of multiple musical genres paired with incisive lyrics. In the beginning, they were a fairly typical five-piece band with a sixth member providing occasional vocal support.

At the band’s core were Bard College buddies Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. They wrote most of the songs. Fagen played keyboards and sang. Becker played bass. They had Denny Dias and Skunk Baxter on guitar and Jim Hodder on drums. Because Fagen was not entirely comfortable doing all the singing, they also had David Palmer sharing vocals. I saw this lineup perform in 1973.

I didn’t know how fortunate I was. A couple of years later, by the time of their third album, the brilliant Pretzel Logic, the touring had stopped. So had the concept of being a “band.” Fagen and Becker didn’t like touring. They decided to jettison the other players and go into the studio where they could simply work on their own vision with the support of talented session players.

Baxter joined the Doobie Brothers. Hodder became a popular session drummer. Dias was one of those talented musicians Fagen and Becker would call on to help out on their future work, though not as an actual member of the band. I’m not sure what became of Palmer.

Pretzel Logic was the creative peak, but the two albums that followed it – Katy Lied and the underrated Royal Scam are excellent as well. Then came the commercial success of Aja, their highest-charting album. I have already weighed in on that.

Before getting to the countdown, I will only add that if I haven’t lost you already, There is one song from Steely Dan’s later work that I consider worthy of inclusion here. So I’m not a total curmudgeon who only like their early stuff. I’m only part curmudgeon.