Top 25 Steely Dan Songs: The Hits

Starting a countdown of my favorite Fagen and Becker tracks with five of their more... conventional songs.

Famously, one of my students described me as “someone who would like Steely Dan.” Of course, they were correct.

I’ve been obsessed with Steely Dan for a couple decades as Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, and myriad studio session stars have made some of my favorite tracks and albums. The virtuosity, the proficiency, the professionalism, the biting and witty lyrics that an English major like myself cannot help but love, there’s so much that has drawn me to this group.

Because of that, I’m going to count down my Top 25 favorite Steely Dan songs. They’re a little different than the other bands I’ve done these countdowns for (the Dead and Springsteen) but they’re a group I’ve spent a ton of time listening to and pouring over their lyrics and thus a great candidate for this exercise.

Now, I’m not including solo stuff by Fagen or Becker (which is tough because Fagen’s The Nightfly is one of my absolute favorite albums…) and I’ll be building towards a final, absolute favorite all-time top 5 songs at the end.

But let’s get into the list with this first batch of five songs, which are amongst the most straight-forward songs in Steely Dan’s catalogue.

“Dirty Work”

My first favorite Steely Dan song, and (at least sonically) one of their more straight-forward. However, while the song sounds like something perfectly out of 70s AM radio, the lyrics hint at something much more subversive (a Steely Dan trademark).

A song about a man who’s needed “When you need a bit of lovin' ‘cause your man is out of town” is not what you expect when you have that AM gold sound and catchy melody. We’ve got this song about infidelity that is told from the perspective of the other man in this triangle

When I think about this song, I cannot help but think of Tony Soprano singing this song while driving his SUV.

“Midnite Cruiser”

Another bit of 70s AM radio gold, another song with much greater complexity lurking underneath. “Midnite Cruiser,” much like other Steely Dan songs I’ll be talking about later, is a song of a “gentleman loser” amidst the world of jazz (or at least he would like to be). The chorus is a real knock-out and there’s a little of the guitar solo-ing that you’ll also hear on “Reelin’ in the Years” on the very same album.

“Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)”

The third track here off of Can’t Buy a Thrill (and, funnily enough, none of them with Donald Fagen on lead vocals), another song that does not sound anything like what most of Steely Dan’s oeuvre sounds like.

That said, as with all three of these tracks off of Can’t Buy a Thrill, there’s something that’s pre-rock and roll to this track that is in keeping with Steely Dan’s interest in those older forms of popular music.

“My Old School”

A song that tells the story from the early days of Fagen and Becker’s friendship, which began during their time as students at Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson. As this piece (initially published in Entertainment Weekly in 2006) makes clear, during those days an injustice or betrayal occurred that left Fagen writing, “I'm never going back to my old school.” In addition to those biting, sneering lyrics and tales of midcentury campus life, the song’s bona fides as a great Dan track come from the guitar solos that pepper the track by Skunk Baxter of Doobie Brothers fame.

“Any Major Dude Will Tell You”

A song that’s very sweet, which makes it really stand out in the Steely Dan back catalogue. It’s a song of encouragement, which you can hear in the song’s chorus:

When the demon is at your door

In the morning it won't be there no more

Any major dude will tell you

While the Can’t Buy a Thrill tracks have an… almost Tin Pan Alley-esque quality to them, “Major Dude” off 1974’s Pretzel Logic feels like something more contemporary. It’s also a testament to the chops, musically and lyrically, of Fagen and Becker that they could create this song that has such pleasantness because they’re obviously predisposed to songs that are a little bit stranger or darker or more sarcastic.

I’ll own up to the fact that my first exposure to this song was Wilco’s cover of it on the Me, Myself, and Irene soundtrack (that featured quite a few bands covering Steely Dan songs).

Did I leave off any of the most straightforward Steely Dan tracks? Should I have included Showbiz Kids in here? Let me know!