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Every Steely Dan Song Ranked

The Seventies jazz-rock masterminds have never been more popular. So we’re counting down the whole Dan catalog — the good, the bad, and the Gaucho

There’s no story anywhere in music like Steely Dan. The Seventies jazz-rock masterminds have gone in and out of style over the years, but they’ve never been more popular, more influential, more of a cultural obsession than they are right now. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were truly ahead of their time, with a string of classic albums, satirizing 1970s coked-out yacht-rock smoothitude even as they luxuriated in it. And one thing never changes — no band is more fun to argue about. Steely Dan fans love to debate every last detail in the band’s music, every song, every drum break or sax solo, from the caves of Altamira to the oleanders of Annandale. So let’s bring on the ultimate Steely Dan argument starter: all 84 of their songs, ranked. The good, the bad, and the Gaucho.

Somehow, these major dudes matter more than ever these days. As Alex Pappademas writes in Quantum Criminals, the ultimate study of the Fagen/Becker universe, they’re “two grumpy-looking guys obsessed with making the smoothest music of all time.” The Steely Dan arguments keep changing over the years. Their earlier, thornier work used to be the hipsters’ choice — as Stephen Malkmus, the prototypical Gen X Dan fan, told Rolling Stone in 2001, it was all about “the early stuff, before they became like these icy commentators on the death of Valium L.A.” But these days, the lush grooves of Aja and Gaucho rule their canon for most fans. Either way, let’s celebrate that music. So here’s a toast of Cuervo Gold and fine Colombian to the timeless genius of Fagen and Becker. We know you’re smoking wherever you are.

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