Every Steely Dan Song Ranked

Unsurprisingly, the back section of this list will mainly be taken up by songs from their two post-reunion albums, 2000’s Two Against Nature and 2003’s Everything Must Go, solid LPs that didn’t quite deliver on the level of their 1970s work. The sonic depth of field opens up widely on this panoramic, sparsely populated track recorded without any instrumental contributions by Becker or Fagen. Instead, the painful story of a man’s addiction to a toxic girl — or perhaps to drugs — is brought to life through the nervy, fill-heavy drumming of session ace Vinnie Colaiuta, and a lovely vibes solo by Dave Schenk. — Ernesto Lechner

Featuring an obscure lyric countered by a rollicking groove and soulful background vocals, “Blues Beach” is believed to be a metaphor about going to rehab — “a stone soul picnic for the early resigned,” to quote the Fifth Dimension — where withdrawals may find you reaching for a blanket. Fagen’s fleeting piano solo at the 1:55 mark is pure joy, but don’t forget to rent a paranymphic glider. —E.L.

Twenty years elapsed between the release of Gaucho and Two Against Nature, and yet there is not a single sonic element that’s new in the seamless opening track off the band’s 2000 Grammy-winning eighth album. This is Steely Dan at their most decadent, with sharp downbeats on the drums, funky bass lines, and Becker’s fluid guitar licks framing the Hitchcockian tale — part Double Indemnity, part Gaslight — of a man and his mistress planning to dispose of the unsuspecting wife. Slick and brilliant as always, but a bit sterile. —E.L. 

The songs on Everything Must Go were recorded with the conscious desire to capture the feeling of a live performance, and it’s easy to imagine the band playing “Green Book” onstage, especially during the dueling guitar and synth section. The lyrics focus vaguely on virtual erotica made to order — Marilyn 4.0 in the Green Room — or, in Becker’s words, a pornography beyond online pornography. The music, by the way, is “anachronistic but nice.” —E.L.

It’s perfectly understandable why Fagen is done with the guy who steals his money and his girlfriend. But despite a suave melodic hook in its chorus, this half-formed toss-off from Pretzel Logic never quite pulls itself together, making it one of their most forgettable deep cuts. One line — “You know I’m cool/Yes, I feel all right, except when I’m in my room and it’s late at night” — reveals the self-deprecation beneath their hipster pose. But the line about the guy in question possibly being a “fairy” is pretty questionable. —David Browne

It slides forward with maniacal energy — the clockwork drumming and beatific choruses in perfect synch — but the lyrics are delicious in their ambiguity. On the one hand, this could be the jaded narrative of a relationship with a psychotic woman gone wrong; she’s also a knockout, so resistance is futile. Gina could also be the affectionate nickname for a recreational drug, the kind that will leave you in a paranoid stupor, “nailed to the floor in the no-option zone.” —E.L.

An autobiographical declaration of principles about two not-so-young men who attempt to defy their aging process while at the same time remaining relevant in the business, the Two Against Nature title track kicks off with the syncopated percussion and carnival glee of a progressive Brazilian samba, before the track locks into a synthesized groove that brings the band closer to a late-Nineties aesthetic. There’s some evocative voodoo imagery, while the wall-of-sound approach piles up an array of instruments — Latin timbales, vibes, Wurlitzer — guiding Fagen’s Rhodes into previously uncharted territory. —E.L.

With its guitar twang and fulsome vocal harmonies, this Pretzel Logic track plays like a parody of contemporaries like the Eagles — or, rather, the Old West homages that some of those bands indulged in. (As Fagen even sings, “You’ve seen all the Western movies.”) The lyrics have a more narrative construct than most, touching on robbery, murder, and retribution. But the minor “With a Gun” also proves there’s such a thing as a Steely Dan song that’s too oddball and obtuse. —D.B.

“Jack of Speed” appeared in the band’s set list four years before the release of Two Against Nature, with a rare lead vocal by Walter Becker. Judging by the swanky intro, this could be a song about flirting with European models at the Cannes Film Festival. As it turns out, it’s a heart-wrenching fable, detailing the downfall of Jack due to a methamphetamine addiction. Alienating his social circle by voicing out conservative political views at a party was only the beginning. Now Jack has stepped into the abyss — the track ends advising his wife to walk away and never look back, no matter what he promises. —E.L.

If the Dan intended to make a more radio-friendly album after Countdown to Ecstasy, they were still going to do a few things very much their own irreverent and unpredictable way. The only cover version on a Dan studio album is this homage to one of their heroes, Duke Ellington, by way of a version of one of his signature songs from decades before. It’s a jaunty digression, for sure, but the loving way they re-create Ellington’s arrangement, replacing the horn solos with a Jeff “Skunk” Baxter pedal steel, was also a sign that their taste would always extend far beyond the confines of mainstream pop. —D.B.

Rockers in the 1970s really liked to mess around with the iconography of fascism. Maybe it was all that white marching powder. In any case, here’s a laid-back 12-bar blues that seems to be about a couple of guys excitedly walking into a fascist political rally — ”Don’t bother to understand/Don’t question the little man/Be part of the brotherhood,” one of them assures his buddy. In the second verse, they head back to the spot of the event years later, still in awe of being “just where he stood.” It’s all rendered from a chill distance and a hot, sprawling Rick Derringer guitar solo. —Jon Dolan

One of the band’s breeziest tunes, the light-as-a-feather “Pixeleen” benefits by the vocal contribution of jazz singer Carolyn Leonhart. It begins with Fagen pitching a brilliant idea for a film series: the title’s ultra-teen heroine, who clings to the roof of the speeding New York subway to fight the bad guys while negotiating a personal life populated by her stupid father and a demanding boyfriend. She dances in the video with a gun and tambourine, but the nonsensical lyrics are just an excuse for a track that, 40 years ago, could have been a radio hit. —E.L.

On Can’t Buy a Thrill’s closer, Fagen and Becker double down on eccentricity, pairing a complex, almost suite-like structure with cryptic lyrics that seem to suggest an incorrigible addict pleading for one more chance at redemption. It all sounds a bit fussy and overstuffed, like spare parts from two or three songs stitched together, showing how, at this early stage, the duo were still working out a few compositional kinks. —Hank Shteamer

Just in case we needed tangible proof that Fagen and Becker hadn’t lost their touch for creating self-contained pop-rock gems, “Cousin Dupree” was wisely chosen as the lead single for Two Against Nature. A touring musician of little note, Dupree has returned home and is living with his aunt, only to fall in love with his first cousin. His attempts at seducing her go nowhere fast, and her words of rejection are priceless: “Maybe it’s the skeevy look in your eyes/That your mind has turned to applesauce/The dreary architecture of your soul.” In 2001, the song won a Grammy in the Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal category. —E.L.

A killer groove from a killer album. Countdown to Ecstasy was a commercial flop at the time, but it has a unique sound — the only album that Fagen and Becker wrote for an actual band, as evidenced in this five-man lounge-funk jam. As they admit in the 1998 reissue liner notes, it was the work of “a songwriting duo who were now certain that a steroidal hellhound was on their trail.” But “Your Gold Teeth” sums up their existential worldview: “You throw out your gold teeth/Do you see how they roll?” Such a great line, they revived it a couple of years later for a very different (but even better) sequel, “Your Gold Teeth II.” —Rob Sheffield

It’s possible to read some subtle irony into this straightforward R&B-meets-rock number about sweeping societal change (especially given the seemingly snarky LP-sleeve annotation, which asks, “Remember this one from college?”). But overall it feels like one of the blander early Dan tunes. Despite a sharp, catchy chorus and a typically feisty Jeff “Skunk” Baxter solo, it never quite gets off the ground. —H.S.

The Beatles concluded their recording output musing about the love you make. True to form, Becker and Fagen followed a different path when it came time to turn the lights off with the ending track of their final album, comparing the Dan to a corporation that’s gone out of business, humiliated by the competition. There’s time for a last hurrah, and Walt Weiskopf’s wailing tenor sax in the intro reaffirms the band’s love affair with jazz. This farewell is one dissolute party — are you surprised? — with cartons of cigarettes, a pool of margaritas, and a last romp with Miss Fugazy in the service elevator. (Dave from Acquisitions will capture the action with his Handycam.) The two-part harmonies are affecting and exquisite — the farewell glow of a band that was always a bit too clever and talented for its own good. —E.L.

In 2000, the excitement over a new Steely Dan record was marred by the actual songs on Two Against Nature: A meticulous re-creation of the band’s plush DNA, they were also painfully short on memorable hooks. “Almost Gothic” was one of the few exceptions, with a gorgeous melody that leaves you basking in the glorious afterglow of the Aja years. Fagen’s delivery is warm and effortless in this sordid, impressionistic chronicle about a man obsessed with his dominatrix and her expertise in the dark erotic arts. Everything works to perfection, from the sinuous harmonies to Michael Lionheart’s nocturnal, muted trumpet solo. —E.L.

Katy Lied ends up with a tune about the fine art of faking it until you make it — whether your trying to fit in in the barrio, pretending you can afford to hang with the high-rollers uptown, or clinging to your manhood against all evidence. The song’s kaleidoscopic arrangement and playful melodies make all these interwoven self-deceptions feel like games worth playing, a fool’s parlays rendered with the swirling grandeur of Ellington fantasia. —J.D.

A funky rocker powered by pounding piano and a spiffily involved verse, with lyrics that some have suggested are a meditation on draft-dodging, “Fire in the Hole” is another overachieving Can’t Buy a Thrill deep cut. Impeccably crafted and featuring formidable solos from Fagen on keys and Jeff “Skunk” Baxter on pedal steel, it could have been a standout on another band’s less-sturdy debut. —H.S.

It would take a Ph.D.-level Danologist to tease out all the sleazy innuendo in this slinky funk number, but the tone is clear enough from lines like “Slow down/I’ll tell you when/I may never walk again.” Probably the weakest track on Aja, it’s still got plenty going for it, notably a belty Michael McDonald-led bridge and whimsical piano breaks from jazz great Victor Feldman. —H.S.  

Here’s how toxic Fagen finds the unspecified relationship in this song: “Won’t you turn that bebop down?
I can’t hear my heart beat.” You know you’ve irked these guys when they want less volume with their jazz. The closing track on Pretzel Logic is itself a bop with a sneaky chorus that verges on filler, but its melody, vacuum-sealed arrangement, and succinct and precise horns all point the way to the Dan’s future; musically at least, the song is practically a prequel to “Hey Nineteen.” —D.B.

Two Against Nature ends with a bang, and the eight-minute-long “West of Hollywood” remains the longest track that the band ever recorded. An upbeat song carried through by Sonny Emory’s piston-like drum beat, it delves into the highs and lows of a couple’s hedonistic thrill ride (“A weekend of bliss/Then the rainy season”). A lengthy tenor sax solo by Chris Potter adds a spiraling, melancholy effect to the climax — a reminder of the band’s chronic infatuation with the tenets of old-school jazz. —E.L.

After the Me Decade ended, so did Steely Dan — but not before recording Gaucho, the final album of their initial run. It’s the most Steely Dan that Steely Dan ever got — the culmination of the sleek studio perfection they’d painstakingly strived for for all those years. The record was a meticulous affair, famously involving 42 session players and 11 engineers. And when one of those engineers accidentally erased “The Second Arrangement” (making it a holy grail for fans they wouldn’t hear until years later), “Third World Man” took its place. On an album where coke dealers, hookers, and skeezy old men reign supreme, “Third World Man” is the outlier that’s confounded listeners for years. It’s the final track, where Becker and Fagen cut the cynicism and take pity on Johnny, a “little guy” whose bunker is “filled with sand.” Guitarist Larry Carlton’s fantastic solo doesn’t just close out the somber song. It’s the finale to Gaucho, the Seventies, and the O.G. Dan as we know it. —Angie.Martoccio

Few indignities are ever too small for the cuckolded men of the Steely Dan canon. The narrator in “Everything You Did” swings between betrayal, heartache, and limp rage, creating an all-consuming vortex that seems to swallow him and reassert itself in a desire for more humiliation: “I know your filthy mind/Now you’re gonna do me everything you did baby.” (Though who’s to say that’s not how everyone here consensually gets off.) But the most devastating and hilarious line has to do with the soundtrack drowning out this pathetic domestic dispute: “Turn up the Eagles the neighbors are listening.” Not that there’s anything wrong with seeking a peaceful, easy feeling in the midst of turmoil. Fagen and Becker might even agree. —Jon Blistein

A breakaway school in the Dan Studies community contends that this song is about a guy who can’t wait for his wife to fall asleep so he can masturbate, but that reading is callous. It’s obviously about the much-less creepy theme of a guy waiting for his wife to fall asleep so he can go out and cheat with a younger woman. Doing this as smooth jazz rock could come of too sleazy, but it’s a joyful rock tune delivered with a real sense of rapture — from the hopeful passion in Fagen’s vocal (“you know it’s real, it’s got to be”) to Jeff Porcaro’s exuberant drumming to Dean Parks’ short, lavishly sweet guitar solo. What begins sort of gross ends up pretty great. —J.D.

The R&B-infused rocker “Kings” is minor early Dan, but the song’s ear-catching details — the spidery descending riff that leads into the chorus, the droll prog-like bridge that returns as an outro — reveal that Fagen and Becker’s trademark meticulousness was already very much in play. While Fagen turns in a solid lead vocal, it’s Elliott Randall’s guitar solo, veering from perverse to virtuosic midway through, that makes the song. —H.S.

Various Gaucho outtakes have made their way out into the world over the years thanks to tape traders and bootleggers, and it’s a good thing, because some of them are as good as what ended up on the album. Less celebrated than “The Second Arrangement” but every bit as solid is “The Bear.” Wedding a snazzy, low-down funk groove to an elliptical tale of shady characters on the lam, pursued by a “bear that walks like a man,” it’s essentially Steely Dan by numbers, but that hardly matters when the results are this satisfying. No wonder it gained semi-official status back in 2011 when the Dan finally trotted it out live at a handful of shows. —H.S.

The Royal Scam was the first Steely Dan album to feature the great drummer Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, and “Green Earrings” is anchored by a fleet-footed take on his signature “Purdie Shuffle.” It’s a groove as alluring as the rings of rare design, Greek medallions, and sparkling smiles that Fagen sings about — and just as elusive as the Clavinet stabs and guitar licks that prickle and pop in its wake. Yearning and memory is a combination capable of driving anyone mad, but on “Green Earrings” it has its own appeal: “I remember/The look in your eyes,” Fagen sings, “I don’t mind/I don’t mind.” —J.B

It’s predator time, as Becker attempts to seduce a younger woman armed with the awkward slang of his generation. (Spoiler alert: He fails.) It’s his only lead vocal on a Steely Dan album, and it’s hard not to assume that Fagen could have rescued the questionable comedic qualities of the material. The chorus — bubbly and transcendent — provides a beautiful study in contrasts. —E.L.

The Seventies had two great songs about New Orleans sex workers in the French Quarter calling out to potential customers, “Voulez vous?” “Pearl of the Quarter” is the second most famous, after LaBelle’s Number One cowbell-funk classic, “Lady Marmalade.” (ABBA’s “Voulez Vous” was 5,000 miles away.) It’s one of Steely Dan’s most anomalously romantic ballads, with a country twang in Jeff Baxter’s steel guitar. On an album as cold blooded as Countdown to Ecstasy, it’s strange to hear Fagen sing such a warmly affectionate love song, but of course there’s an ironic twist: He’s just another trick who suckers himself into believing his Louise really loves him back. —R.S.

One of the goofiest concepts in the Dan songbook, “Godwhacker” is about a cadre of elite assassins who are trying to find a way into heaven to liquidate none other than the Almighty himself. Inspired by the feelings of rage that Fagen experienced after his mother’s death, the track begins with a cool, spy movie theme pattern, and reaches a moment of supreme elegance during the bridge (“Be very, very quiet/Clock everything you see”). The harmonica-sounding synth solo, not a good idea. —E.L.

A top contender for Steely Dan’s funniest song ever, “The Fez” is a delusional disco fantasia — an almost-certain send-up of the high-gloss dance floor sounds then sweeping the nation. But even when winking mimics, Fagen and Becker (and rare third co-writer, keyboardist Paul Griffin) were still committed perfectionists. “The Fez” grooves gloriously not in spite of but precisely because of the ham-fisted exotica of its lead synth riff and the unchecked libido of its pompous narrator, who’s totally believable as either a devoted practitioner of safe sex or a guy who can’t fuck unless he’s wearing his little hat. —J.B.

It makes perfect sense that the opening track of the band’s last studio album finds an employee at the mall advising customers over the PA system to finish up their shopping now that the sky is blood orange with radioactivity and the world is about to end. Yes, it’s “Cancellation day/The big adiós,” but at least the four-piece brass section adds a touch of gravitas with their solemn, majestic riffs. —E.L.

Becker’s wounded guitar lines on this Two Against Nature track are abrasive in this sad slice of middle-age-life tale that feels like a New Yorker short story. Still working on that novel while stuck at an inane day job, the protagonist encounters Franny from his NYU days, and their conversation quickly becomes a pathetic tally of failures and successes. Attempting to recapture a spark of the golden days, Franny suggests a ride back to her hotel, but he refuses. Suddenly, the trio of backup vocalists repeating the “shame about me” chorus sounds increasingly despondent. —E.L.

If Steely Dan wanted to focus on pop songs after their more tangled and brilliantly obtuse second album, Countdown to Ecstasy, they hit the mark with this pretty — especially pretty for them — track from Pretzel Logic. The song, which dates back to Becker and Fagen’s pre-Dan days, has the glistening piano and hooky bounce of something you might have actually heard on AM radio back in that day. But these guys could never leave it at that, of course: With its lines about a “special lack of grace,” this caustic putdown of the town where Becker and Fagen went to college (at Bard) is typically, wonderfully unsentimental. —D.B.

An upbeat tune with an inviting melody about a pedophile who happily welcomes neighborhood teenagers into his den to watch 8 mm porno movies. With any other band this would be a dangerous descent into the mortal abyss — for Steely Dan, it’s a solid way to open Side Two. They first recorded it in 1971 as a guitar-funk strut with Flo and Eddie of the Turtles on backing vocals. When they re-upped it for Katy Lied, the song had been significantly gussied up with a Latin-tinged groove, a cool vibes melody in the chorus, and radiant backing vocals from Sherlie Matthews, Carolyn Willis, Myrna Matthews, and Michael McDonald. The song’s beauty makes it all the weirder, their unique spin on the idea that evil was always lurking under the cozy veneer of suburban life. —J.D.

This Gaucho deep cut is drenched in jazz funk, opening with a sizzling organ and a deliriously heavy bass line (there’s also some flugelhorn and timbales sprinkled in, in case you were wondering). The song’s delightfully strange lyrics — from a smelly, prickly pear to “The milk truck eased into my space/Somebody screamed somewhere” — continues to puzzle fans to this day. Who is this nemesis? Their child? A former friend? A burned lover? Who’s to say, really, only that the rival with the tiny hand is no longer welcome. “I loved you more than I can tell,” Fagen sings. “But now it’s stomping time.” —A.M. 

One of the strongest cuts on Everything Must Go, “Things I Miss the Most” is a four-minute masterclass in storytelling. Becker’s guitar provides ongoing, acerbic commentary on the reflections of a lonely man who ponders the pros and cons of a recent, financially devastating breakup. The description of his current lifestyle — frozen dinners, girlie magazines, building a model of a 1956 sunken ship — is nothing compared to the laundry list of all the things he pines for (“The talk/The sex/Somebody to trust”). This becomes increasingly vacuous as he focuses on the properties, cars, and luxurious pieces of furniture that are now part of his past. —E.L.

In the late Sixties, Fagen and Becker moved to Brooklyn, finding a pair of apartments in Park Slope (which as Fagen later noted, “had yet to become the Hipster Heaven that was to be”). The period inspired this balmy yet typically barbed soft rocker about the neighbor then literally living under them, a cantankerous “charmer” ID’d on the Can’t Buy a Thrill sleeve as “President Street Pete.” As later unpacked by Steely Dan superfan Aimee Mann — who entered into an unlikely email correspondence with Fagen after getting booted from an opening slot on a 2022 Dan tour — the song “listed all these prizes they felt like this guy thought he was entitled to,” such as swanky accommodations at Miami’s Eden Roc resort and a “piece of island cooling in the sea.” An outlier in the early Dan catalog thanks in part to a lead vocal by obscure early singer David Palmer, it’s nevertheless an understated gem, highlighted by Jeff “Skunk” Baxter’s wispy pedal steel. —H.S.

As if to ram home the point that they were never going to completely give in to convention, Becker and Fagen didn’t just include a Duke Ellington cover on Pretzel Logic. They also followed it, one track later, with this tribute to another hero, Charlie Parker. A bravura performance that veers toward the zippy energy of non-Parker-like fusion, “Parker’s Band” is also an early testament to what Steely Dan could accomplish when they pushed the bandmates and studio players into uncharted waters. It also takes the corniest of conceits — the elevating, all-encompassing power of music — and removes any and all cringe factors from it. —D.B.

The debate over whether Steely Dan qualify as yacht rock rages to this day. Wherever you land on that hot-button issue, it’s fair to say that Can’t Buy a Thrill’s Side One closer certainly lands pretty damn close to that territory, with its breezy, bossa nova-esque feel and unusually supple Fagen vocal. It’s also a slyly brilliant early example of the way the Dan paired unthreatening sonics with pointed lyrical cynicism. Lines like “Talkin’ ‘bout a world where all is free/It just couldn’t be” have led some to peg the song as a rejoinder to the starry-eyed idealism of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” In retrospect, this feels like the third Can’t Buy a Thrill hit that never was. —H.S.

When Janie’s father goes on an arson spree, the innocent girl from Tampa falls in the clutches of a suave older guy who buys takeout from Dean and Deluca but expects her to make the traffic wait a little more enticing during their Sunday drive. A birthday in Spain is definitely a possibility, just as long as Janie brings over an open-minded girlfriend for some threesome fun. A soulful alto sax solo by Chris Potter makes this immaculately arranged cautionary tale from Two Against Nature sound even creepier. —E.L.

Talk about predicting the future. Fifty years before Donald Trump was reelected, Fagen took on the voice of a character surrounded by “jealousy and mayhem,” to the point where he “ain’t got the heart to lose another fight.” So, what the hell, he’ll just take it all one evening at a time until a better world arrives. It’s as if he and Becker wrote the theme song for this year. With its economical incorporation of a horn section, this gritty Pretzel Logic deep cut forecasts Steely Dan’s more sophisticated and jazz-accented musical future too. —D.B.

Forget Reno: There once was no place better to end a marriage swiftly than Haiti (“If you can say ‘incompatibility of character’ in French, you’re as good as gold,” Fagen quipped in a 1976 interview). That kind of setup is ripe for a Steely Dan punch line, and they lean fully into it on “Haitian Divorce,” a reggae-infused number marked by an outrageous talk-box guitar solo from Dean Parks and spots of dubious patois crooning from Fagen. All of that is in service of a saga about the dissolution of an all-American marriage, a one-night stand in the Caribbean, a tearful reconciliation, and a baby with, uh, “semi-mojo.” It’s all at once kind of great and kind of cringe, and the fact that “Haitian Divorce” was Steely Dan’s biggest hit ever in the U.K. — well, make of that what you will. —J.B. 

This Pretzel Logic track is one of their sneakiest and scariest. The relentless baroque piano that runs throughout makes it sound as if Fagen is boning up on his classical chops. But the beauty of that chord pattern soon gives way to the harrowing story of a friend who’s broke, homeless, and clearly having serious issues — in other words, a typical character in a Dan song. For some quick cash, the dude entices Fagen’s narrator to buy his gold ring and uses the windfall for one more score, which kills him. When the narrator gives the ring back — seemingly placing it on the finger of the corpse — the result is one of the bleakest and most chilling moments on a Dan album. —D.B.

A post-apocalyptic rocker, with their proggiest Seventies synths. After the nuclear bomb drops, wiping out human civilization, a lone hermit gets on the ham radio, sending out a signal to see if there are any other survivors out there in the desert. If so, maybe they can hang out, be friends, watch the sun turn brown, go for a drive through the ruins of Santa Fe? But until then, he’s “the King of the World as far as I know.” It’s a perfect metaphor for two NYC exiles feeling trapped and isolated on the West Coast. In their 1998 liner notes, Fagen and Becker grouse that “the reverse tape echo effect in ‘King of the World’ was a questionable idea, imperfectly executed.” Just like human civilization. —R.S.

It’s hard to imagine a more mortifying recording-studio scenario than an engineer accidentally erasing an entire song from the Gaucho session tape, a blunder that consigned what was shaping up to be the album’s lead single to the dustbin. Much has been written about that fateful day — honestly, it’s a one-act play waiting to happen — but after years of sketchy bootlegs and feverish internet chatter, “The Second Arrangement” made a glorious return in 2023 thanks to the diligent efforts of late Dan engineer Roger Nichols’ daughters, who found a near-finished tape in his desk drawer. It’s not a stretch to call it a lost classic: a serial two-timer’s anthem set to sprightly funk rock, almost like an upbeat companion piece to the similarly sordid but far more bummed-out “Babylon Sisters.” —H.S.

“Not music about doom and melodrama—that kind of stuff isn’t really frightening,” Fagen told Rolling Stone in 1974. “What’s really frightening is mediocrity. The mediocrity of everyday life, the mediocrity we see around us. That frightens me.” You can hear that in “Razor Boy,” a lament for a social climber living on borrowed time. Fagen asks, “Will you still have a song to sing when the Razor Boy comes and takes your fancy things away?” So who is the Razor Boy? A coke dealer? A loanshark, repo man, mob enforcer? The song sounds tender on the surface but vicious beneath, with jazz legend Ray Brown on upright bass. Victor Feldman’s vibraphone is a soothing presence in a song that is anything but. Fagen sounds forlorn when he warns, “You know that the coming is so close at hand.” —R.S.

During the Aja period, the L.A.-based Fagen and Becker found themselves perpetually homesick for their New York stomping grounds. On this roomy, understated deep cut, they spun some Homeric imagery into what Fagen later called “a little blues about Ulysses.” Musically, the song is perhaps best remembered for its beautifully undulating drum track, a prime example of session legend Bernard Purdie’s trademark Purdie Shuffle that nicely complements the seafaring imagery of the lyrics. —H.S.