Steely Dan Top 25: The latter-day stuff

Another batch of five songs from Steely Dan's catalogue, focusing on those that come from the group's two twenty-first century albums.

The next five songs I’ll be covering in my countdown of my favorite Steely Dan songs (save for one) comes from the two albums they released in the 21st century—Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go. While Donald Fagen and Walter Becker reunited formally as Steely Dan in the 1990s to perform live, these two albums brought them back to mind for the music listening public and led to a surprising bit of record industry adulation. It provided the band with an appropriate coda or final act to their run (which would end, in essence, with Becker’s death in 2017).

“FM”

This one was recorded during that Aja-Gaucho period but couldn’t fit in on that post, so it’s going here with the other songs following the band’s 1980s and 1990s hiatus.

It’s a song from a forgotten film of the same name; however, “FM” has lived on as major part of Steely Dan’s back catalogue. A song that’s nostalgic or romantic (in this case, for the FM radio) but not in a syrupy, cliched way. Fagen would go on to explore this motif of the radio and the radio DJ in the title track for his solo album, The Nightfly. I also think the phrase “funked-up muzak” would be a good description for Steely Dan’s sound starting with Aja.

There’s also some of my favorite Becker guitar work as well as the addition of a saxophone solo courtesy of Pete Christlieb.

“FM” also features two members of Steely Dan’s frenemies The Eagles on backing vocals—Glenn Frey and Don Henley. It’s also the focus of maybe my favorite episode of the Yacht Rock series.

“Gaslighting Abbie”

Two Against Nature, Steely Dan’s comeback album, was one I enjoyed as soon as it was released. When it beat out The Marshall Mathers LP and Kid A for the 2001 Album of the Year Grammy, I was not mad about it at all. Yes, the music was slick and not as aggressive or experimental as those other two choices, but it was music being done at such a high level with a kind of witty lyricism that wasn’t typical of most popular music. Yes, I was that cool I was repping Steely Dan in high school.

The album’s first track, “Gaslighting Abbie,” was one I enjoyed almost immediately because of the smoothed-out bounce of the backing track and the stellar harmonies in the chorus. Only later, when I learned what “gaslighting” was did I realize the darkness under the surface of the song.

What's fascinating is that while the music on Two Against Nature is this hyper-perfect, cleanly produced thing, the lyrics are about some of the most awful and reprehensible people you can imagine being depicted in song. I think those who, in the wake of it winning that grammy, wanted to dismiss it fail to grasp that. In a song like this one or “Janie Runaway” or “Cousin Dupree,” it’s pretty far from disposable muzak that doesn’t have any heft to it.

“What a Shame About Me”

The second track on Two Against Nature is different from the album opener in that it’s not about a completely reprehensible person. But it does focus on someone who is really down and out after maybe having potential for something more (“I was grinding through my day gig, stacking cutouts at the Strand” [… ]“somebody told me in the early eighties you were gonna be the next big thing"). While Steely Dan is known for crafting these catchy songs about pretty awful characters, they also do a good job with ones about these down-and-out Beat types (it’s the focus of my favorite Steely Dan song, which should be an enormous hint).

While there’s a certain amount of over-the-top self pity that is indicative of the song’s somewhat sarcastic bent (I mean… “what a shame about me” is a lot), this track does convey a certain sadness regarding one’s life and realizing what one has lost and how life didn’t turn out the way they thought it would.

This was also the first time I’d heard of The Strand so of course when I made my first trip to New York City in the years following the release of this album I made a point of going to visit that bookstore (which is one of my absolute favorites).

“Jack of Speed”

After those first two tracks, Two Against Nature becomes very Aja-esque in that the whole of the rest of the album is more than the combination of the individual tracks themselves. “Jack of Speed” is a standout though, another great tune about someone in the throes of addiction (in this case, to speed). The cool darkness of the music mirrors the world of addiction and abuse into which the protagonist has sunk.

“Jack of Speed” is example of the proficiency and professionalism of Fagen and Becker. It’s a song that’s more immediate than “What a Shame About Me,” but it’s all done so well (the music, the melody, the lyrics) it hits you just right.

The mentioning of how “that right-wing hooey sure stunk up the joint” does a good job of grounding the song in its moment (pre-9/11 George W Bush-era America).

“Things I Miss the Most”

My favorite track on Everything Must Go tells the story of a recently divorced man reflecting on the things he’s lost because of that. Of course, in true dark Steely Dan fashion, he moves quickly from the human aspects of that relationship to the physical objects (“The Audi TT, the house on the Vineyard, the house on the Gulf Coast”). It’s an interesting middle ground, a figure who is on the one hand kind of reprehensible but also a sad tale (“I kinda like frying up my sad cuisine, getting in bed and curling up with a girlie magazine” … “I'm building the Andrea Doria out of balsa wood”).

The song’s protagonist has lost a lot and is living, what is apparent to anyone seeing this, a sad and lonely life (even as he tries to justify it). There’s a dark, pathetic humor to the story that’s told. You can’t help but see this figure as a cliché but also feel bad/sad for him.

We’ve covered twenty of my favorite twenty-five Steely Dan songs. The next entry in this series will be the final one, which will cover my five favorite Steely Dan songs. But did I miss any tracks off of Two Against Nature or Everything Must Go? Let me know