Did Steely Dan ever have a number one?
It’s not like Steely Dan were ever chasing pop appeal, but did they ever sit atop the hallowed Billboard Hot 100 or 200 charts?
The duo were made for the album era. It was clear from 1972’s Can’t Buy a Thrill debut that co-founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were making music for themselves, indulging in their love of ironic lyrical snark and jazzy expanse to cut a soft rock sound, both orbiting the Eagles’ breezy soundtracks while hiding a cynical punch in the pair’s songwriting.
Such curious acerbicsm would prop up Steely Dan as a stalwart of 1970s FM radio, as well as the decade’s prickly antidote. Just don’t call it ‘yacht rock’. Legend has it that Fagen personally told someone from the HBO network to “go fuck yourself” when approached for 2024’s Music Box documentary on the genre.
Once they abandoned their touring duties to commit to a purely studio project for Katy Lied, Steely Dan’s taste for complex songcraft and meticulous recording polish would herald their true golden age in the eyes of hardcore ‘Danfans’, or kick off their tedious run of sterile perfectionism to their detractors. Whatever the case, the AOR era would owe plenty to Fagen and Becker’s uncompromising dwell in their finely crafted jazz-rock universe.
Musical stubbornness didn’t entirely scare off the pop charts. ‘Do It Again’, ‘Reelin’ In the Years’, ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’, ‘Peg’, and ‘Hey Nineteen’ all flexed the duo’s knack for a pop hook when they felt like it, and peaked at number 11 or higher in the US singles chart. But did they ever grace the premier top spot during their classic heyday?
So did they ever have a number one?
No, or at least not where it mattered. 1977’s Aja nabbed a very respectable three on the Billboard 200, and ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ four on the Hot 100, but never won a chart topper in either.
The closest Steely Dan got when considering all of Billboard’s minor sub-charts was 1978’s Greatest Hits LP, claiming number one on the Billboard Catalog Albums chart, and ‘Hey Nineteen’ topping the US Adult Contemporary chart in 1981. But the Hot 100 and 200 always eluded the pair.
Not that they cared. Not only did their fans never want the duo any other way, but Fagen wore his contempt for mainstream attention firmly on his sleeve. “Anthemic rock music is inherently fascist,” he quipped in 2013’s Eminent Hipsters book. “Anything intended to move huge masses of people is politically offensive to me.”
Recognition finally caught up with them. After years of cutting records on their own terms, Steely Dan were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, a year after their Two Against Nature comeback, still not boasting a solid chart topper, but enjoying a distinctive body of work giving future bands license to honour their own artfully idiosyncratic impulses and entirely on their own terms. It’s a legacy worth more than pleasing a fickle pop charts.
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