Aja: The Eight-Minute Monument to Jazz-Rock Fusion
Unpacking the mythology and reality of the title track: Steve Gadd's legendary drums, Wayne Shorter's soprano sax, and the surgical editing that made perfection possible.
• Matt Dennis
Black Cow: The Opening Statement of Immaculate Confrontation
How the first track of Aja establishes the sonic template for perfection: Victor Feldman's Rhodes, Bernard Purdie's pocket, and a narrator who's had enough.
• Matt Dennis
The Caves of Altamira: Innocence Lost in Prehistoric Pigment
How Steely Dan turned a Spanish cave painting into a meditation on wonder, disillusionment, and the unbridgeable distance between ancient art and modern consciousness.
• Matt Dennis
Deacon Blues: The Romantic Philosophy of Chosen Failure
Why wanting to be a loser is the most subversive statement on Aja, featuring Pete Christlieb's iconic tenor sax and the art of dignified surrender.
• Matt Dennis
Don't Take Me Alive: The Siege as Rock Anthem
How Steely Dan built a tense, guitar-driven standoff narrative on The Royal Scam, featuring Larry Carlton's most aggressive performance and a lyric that turns urban violence into existential theater.
• Matt Dennis
Everything You Did: Turn Up the Eagles, the Neighbors Are Listening
How a domestic argument became the vehicle for rock's most famous inter-band reference, and how the Eagles answered back with steely knives in Hotel California.
• Matt Dennis
Green Earrings: The Blues Lurking Inside the Machine
How a cryptic lyric about obsession and possession meets one of The Royal Scam's most aggressive guitar-driven arrangements, revealing the blues DNA beneath Steely Dan's sophistication.
• Matt Dennis
Haitian Divorce: Voodoo, Talk Box, and the Dissolution of the American Marriage
How Steely Dan built the strangest track on The Royal Scam around Dean Parks' talk box guitar, a Caribbean narrative of marital collapse, and a groove that became their biggest UK hit.
• Matt Dennis
Home at Last: The Purdie Shuffle and Homeric Wandering
How Bernard Purdie's legendary groove meets Odyssean longing in Steely Dan's meditation on restless return—a song about arrival that never quite settles.
• Matt Dennis
I Got the News: The Tightest Pop on the Most Expensive Album
How Steely Dan's shortest and most conventional song on Aja demonstrates that perfectionism serves groove as much as grandeur.
• Matt Dennis
Josie: The Celebration That Closes the Journey
How Steely Dan's uptempo finale transforms the album's perfectionism into pure joy—featuring Chuck Rainey's irrepressible bass and the art of the triumphant exit.
• Matt Dennis
Kid Charlemagne: The Last Acid King Gets a Guitar Solo for the Ages
How the opening track of The Royal Scam delivers Larry Carlton's most iconic guitar work, Jeff Porcaro's propulsive drumming, and a eulogy for the counterculture wrapped in immaculate pop-rock.
• Matt Dennis
Peg: Seven Guitarists and the Quest for the Perfect Solo
The legendary story of how Jay Graydon succeeded where six others failed, and why twenty seconds of guitar became the ultimate symbol of Steely Dan's perfectionism.
• Matt Dennis
Sign in Stranger: Identity for Sale in a Noir Spaceport
How Steely Dan created a sci-fi noir masterpiece on The Royal Scam, a song about reinvention, erasure, and the marketplace where you can buy a brand new name.
• Matt Dennis
The Fez: The Groove That Somebody Else Started
How a keyboard riff from Paul Griffin became one of Steely Dan's rare co-writing credits, and how a song about insistence became the most relentless groove on The Royal Scam.
• Matt Dennis
The Royal Scam: The American Dream with Monsters on the Roof
How the title track of Steely Dan's fifth album closes the record with a six-and-a-half-minute epic about immigrant disillusionment, urban predation, and the most hideous album cover of the seventies.
• Matt Dennis
Babylon Sisters: The Purdie Shuffle in the Age of Digital Rigor
How the opening track of Gaucho signals the end of the 70s party, featuring a mechanically perfected Purdie Shuffle and the cold dawn of the digital era.
• Matt Dennis
Gaucho: The Unwanted Guest in the Custerdome
A look at the title track's themes of social intrusion and exclusion, analyzed through its complex harmonies and the mystery of the Custerdome.
• Matt Dennis
Glamour Profession: The Disco-Funk of High-End Paranoia
Seven minutes of relentless groove, basketball stars, and illicit transactions. How Glamour Profession captures the dark, cocaine-fueled heart of 1980s Los Angeles.
• Matt Dennis
Hey Nineteen: The Architecture of the Mid-Life Crisis
Behind the smooth Rhodes and the Cuervo Gold lies a brutal examination of aging, irrelevance, and the digital perfection that masks the decay.
• Matt Dennis
My Rival: Petty Jealousy in High Fidelity
Why Steely Dan used a cheap Farfisa organ to anchor a million-dollar production, and how the song captures the essence of paranoid, petty obsession.
• Matt Dennis
Third World Man: The Beautiful End of the Affair
How a salvaged track became the perfect eulogy for the Gaucho era, featuring Larry Carlton's weeping guitar and the final silence of the machines.
• Matt Dennis
Time Out of Mind: The Digital Heartbeat of Heroin Chic
How Steely Dan turned a song about heroin addiction into a polished pop gem, featuring Mark Knopfler and the most aggressive use of digital sampling on the album.
• Matt Dennis
Aja Track by Track: The Most Expensive Album Ever Made
A deep dive into every song on Steely Dan's 1977 masterpiece and the obsession behind it
• Matt Dennis
The Jazz Chords That Made Steely Dan Sound Like Steely Dan
A musician-friendly guide to the harmonic secrets behind Steely Dan's signature sound: extended chords, modal interchange, and why their songs feel so sophisticated.
• Matt Dennis
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker: The Outsiders Who Conquered Pop
The unlikely story of two jazz-obsessed college kids who became one of rock's greatest songwriting partnerships, defined an era, and changed how we think about studio recordings.
• Matt Dennis
Steely Dan's Studio Obsession: Why They Fired Everyone
How two perfectionists dissolved their band to build the cleanest sound in rock
• Matt Dennis