‘Brooklyn’: Steely Dan’s comic critique of cynicism
Let’s be real. Getting a song written about you is a dubious honour. Sure, you may be getting a beautiful love song written about you, or a tribute to your close friendship. It can happen. In reality, though, if you’ve got a song written about you, it’s probably not anything you’d actually want to play to anyone—especially if the artist who wrote it was Steely Dan.
To be clear, being immortalized by a band of their calibre is absolutely an honour. You can be sure that the song will be an absolute banger. However, it will almost certainly be a withering, bitterly funny description of all your worst qualities as a person as well. There’s Dr Wu, the shady therapist cracking onto his female patients in the song of the same name. Or Kid Charlemagne, a drug dealer whose product is so pure it leads to his death.
Then, there’s the nameless subject of one of their best early hits, ‘Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under me)’. The song, track eight on their debut album Can’t Buy A Thrill, is one of the most beloved in the band’s back catalogue, but for years, people just couldn’t make out what exactly David Palmer was on about. That all changed a few years ago, and of all people, we have Aimee Mann to thank for it.
You see, Mann is a die-hard fan of The Dan. So imagine how thrilled she must have been to learn that she was going to open for them on tour in 2022. Then, imagine how crushed she may have been to learn that, as soon as she had been added to the shows, she had been removed from them. She drew a comic about it that she posted to Instagram, speculating that “it seems they thought their audience wouldn’t like a female singer-songwriter?”
Donald Fagan issued a statement to Pitchfork saying that he was “misinformed as to how firm the commitment was to any particular opening act… I thought it might not be the best matchup in terms of musical style.” Mann took it in typical good grace, joking on Twitter that she’d forgive them if they just told her what ‘Brooklyn’ was about. Fagan took this to heart, and emailed a detailed explanation over to Mann in due course.
Mann was astonished, and after getting Fagan’s blessing to share this info, started covering the song on tour and letting everyone else in on the inspiration behind it. Saying to Uncut magazine that the song was about when Fagan and Walter Becker were living in Brooklyn, they had this “downstairs neighbour; this loudmouthed, entitled guy. From a cynical viewpoint, they listed all these prizes they felt like this guy thought he was entitled to; what would it take to make this asshole happy?”
Fagan also confirmed this in an interview for Zoo World magazine in 1974, which I think we can forgive Mann for missing, since she was all of 14 years old at the time. Something worth keeping in mind, then. Next time you feel like having a mard about what you’re owed, there may be a musical genius keeping tabs on you, just waiting to turn your cynicism and entitlement into jazz-pop gold. And there’s no royalties for that.
