‘What’s wrong with people who don’t like this band?’: (Re)considering Steely Dan

Plus, the best BTS deep cuts [View this email online]( [NPR Music]( July 16, 2022 by [Marissa Lorusso]( This week, we’re sharing a reconsideration of the divisive yet beloved Steely Dan; plus, the best new albums out this week. [Steely Dan's Donald Fagen performs onstage.]( Santiago Felipe/Getty Images My brother and I have always shared a taste in music – mostly. He’s five years my junior, and since our teen years, the majority of our conversations have been littered with album recommendations, band names our parents find confounding and debates about the best Mountain Goats records and Harry Styles singles. But he has had one musical obsession that I just could not comprehend: Steely Dan. I think his fascination, which began a few years ago, started out ironic — Wouldn’t it be funny if a millennial fan of My Chemical Romance and Metallica got really into dad rock? But it quickly turned earnest, and he went fully down the rabbit hole. Before long, he had opinions about Steely Dan’s most underrated B-sides, its most overrated hits and the [best stories from the Aja recording sessions](. Though I tried, I never felt particularly moved by the band’s stories of gamblers and hipsters, nor what I considered its loungey, sleazy sound. But when he told me the band would be playing in our home state this summer, I gave in to a sense of sisterly duty and reluctantly agreed to go see the show with him. My brother’s obsession reminds me of an experience critic [Lindsay Zoladz described in the New York Times]( a couple years ago. Zoladz grew up despising Steely Dan, whom her father adored. “As a kid, the noodly, pristine sounds of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen signified nothing so much as my dad exerting oppressive control over the car stereo,” she writes. But in her 30s, she found herself queuing up Pretzel Logic over and over and, eventually, she had to admit it: “My Steely Dan phase was not an aberration,” she writes, “but an inevitable if long-resisted final frontier of my musical taste.” Apparently, Zoladz is not alone. When we arrived at the Steely Dan concert, my brother wondered aloud if he’d be the youngest person there. He wasn’t. The crowd included tons of baby boomers who may have been fans since Can’t Buy A Thrill was originally released in 1972 — but also a good number of 20- and 30-somethings on journeys similar to the one Zoladz described. Their ranks included at least one on-site convert – despite myself, I found the performance thrilling. The setlist was stacked; the band was tight; there were an absurd number of virtuosic solos. Donald Fagen, the sole remaining founding member of the band, seemed genuinely delighted by the crowd’s enthusiasm. I hadn’t realized just how many hits the band has and how many songs I’d recognize, nor had I accounted for how good it would feel to be among a crowd crooning “I’m a fool to do your dirty work” in unison. Nor had I accounted for the joy it would bring me to witness the sheer force of my brother’s enthusiasm throughout the show. By the end of the night, I was in. On the ride home, we listened to The Royal Scam — my brother’s favorite of the group’s records — and I had to admit: I, too, had become a Steely Dan fan. When I mentioned the experience to my coworkers, the response was … mixed, befitting the band’s divisive status. At least one person gave a visible thumbs down over Zoom, but others rushed to welcome me to the fandom and were delighted to tell me about their love for Steely Dan. All Songs Considered’s Robin Hilton told me he’s always been impressed with the band’s songcraft and session musicians. But more than anything, he said, “it’s all about the lyrics. Sometimes cryptic (‘This is the day of the expanding man / The shape is my shade there where I used to stand’); often comical (‘California tumbles into the sea / That’ll be the day I go back to Annandale’) but always brilliant, never too on-the-nose. What’s wrong with people who don’t like this band?” Tom Huizenga, our classical critic, agrees. As a high school student in the late ’70s, he liked the band so much that he “taught a seminar in Steely Dan,” he told me. “I believe that a lot of the words flew over my fellow students’ heads,” he said, “but we had fun trying to figure out what the band was trying to pull off.” I’ve been giving myself a mini-seminar ever since the concert, slowly working my way through Steely Dan’s discography. I was also reminded that in 2019, the website Pitchfork celebrated Steely Dan Day, publishing [long, thoughtful essays about five of the band’s albums]( so I’ve been playing catchup on those, too. Alt.Latino’s Felix Contreras was overjoyed to tell me about his Steely Dan fandom, too: “For me,” he said, “Steely Dan was a pretty basic rock outfit with a nerdy aesthetic and killer guitar solos (‘My Old School’) that stood out amongst the larger than life bombast of the Brothers bands (Allman and Doobie), blues drenched white dudes (The Rolling Stones and J. Geils) and the tight pants, self-indulgent glam rock bands (T. Rex, New York Dolls) — not that any of that was a bad thing.” But what makes the band great, he added, was that rather than sticking to a shtick, Steely Dan “evolved into a band that brought in jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter to play one of the most memorable solos of his storied career” (that would be “Aja,” of course) — “with nerdy lyrics.” “It always makes me smile when someone younger eventually feels that light go off in their own musical world,” he told me. “Welcome to the Nerd Club, Marissa.” I’m glad to be here. And I’m curious: Is there an artist you’ve changed your mind on — or who you’ve come to love through the sheer enthusiasm of someone in your life? I’d love to hear about it. You can let us know by replying via the link at the bottom of this email. --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- New Music - This week’s All Songs Considered New Mix kicks off with a [strong protest message]( from Margo Price featuring Mavis Staples. Plus, a song whose inspiration surprised Bob Boilen, new music from The Mountain Goats and more. - The Italian composer Caterina Barbieri's euphoric new album, Spirit Exit, was made in pandemic isolation. 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