The 10 worst Steely Dan songs
Steely Dan have had a polarising past. While on the one hand, they have won hundreds of thousands of fans, they are no strangers to dividing audiences, so much so that some music lovers have dubbed them the “anti-heroes of the ’70s”. The group have had a string of hits, earned themselves a Grammy, been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and sold millions of albums, so why the apparent controversy?
Steely Dan never conformed to whatever was conventional for the time. Music is still very much an art form that people enjoy, but in the ’70s, live music was all that many people had. It was how artists got their name out there, and the live performance was held up as deciding whether someone was worth your time. Steely Dan’s decision to record songs that relied heavily on technology and could not be played live was controversial and wasn’t met well by some members of the public.
On top of that, the fact remains that some of their songs just aren’t that good. They were experimental, to say the least, and a lot of the time, that experimentation didn’t work. This could especially be seen in early songs such as ‘My Rival’, ‘Haitian Divorce’, and ‘Everything You Did’ which are rife with sonic miscalculations.
Creativity and going against the grain often come at a price, and usually, that price is the production of some pretty bad songs. Since they weren’t afraid to go against the grain and were happy to experiment with different sounds, Steely Dan produced some blunders. So, what are the worst?
The worst Steely Dan songs:
‘Throw Back the Little Ones’
This song is a nothing event. The music is upbeat and easy to nod to, but it doesn’t do enough to grab your attention. The effect on the keys gives them a swamp-like sound that feels odd, and the guitar solo, despite being good, sounds like it has been thrown in there for the sake of it as opposed to contributing to the overall production of the piece.
The biggest issue with the song is a phrase that hasn’t aged well. It’s tough to suggest whether or not it is of its time, but even to question whether something is of its time immediately suggests that it is not of this time, hence why ‘Throw Back the Little Ones’ doesn’t get played much. In the opening line, they say, “Lost in the barrio, I walk like an Injun”. The meaning of the phrase isn’t clear. Some suggest it means walking barefoot, but regardless, it doesn’t sit right in 2023.
‘Haitian Divorce’
This song embraces reggae in a way that doesn’t work. It sounds as if The Police were looking into a funhouse mirror. Granted, the guitar harmonies throughout sound good; they accompany the song well and have a heavy synth quality, which is enjoyable, but it is just very out of place in a reggae-inspired track.
Without touring and with so much technology and sound they could draw influence from, it wasn’t unusual for Steely Dan to try something new. Sometimes, it worked, but then other times, it resulted in Haitian Divorce, a track which no one is looking to stay with.
‘Cousin Dupree’
As soon as ‘Cousin Dupree’ begins, the keys sound sluggish, and the melody gives off the vibe of a loading screen for a rubbish game rather than a half-decent song. The vocals sound just as lacklustre, and the repetition of “how’d you like a kiss from your cousin Dupree” throughout the chorus feels weird.
This was the first single from the band’s 2000 album Two Against Nature. It’s unclear what fans expected from this record, but to kick things off with a song about how much you want to snog your cousin is a rogue move for any band, even one as unconventional as Steely Dan.
‘Slang of Ages’
The idea of this song would have been better left in the hands of someone more used to writing comedy into music. Weird Al Yankovic might have had a good chance at making this track half-decent, but in the hands of Steely Dan, the joke about how slang terms change over time doesn’t land.
The beat accompanying the song is mundane, but it’s a track where listeners should pay attention to the lyrics; the issue is the lyrics aren’t worth listening to. The song follows a man trying to pick up a woman and uses slang terms such as old and new to do it. It’s a joke which might have a place on an early Simpsons episode but not on a song like this.
‘My Rival’
This one is just weird. Donald Fagen’s vocals sound odd before even getting into the subject matter. He emphasises ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ in a way that makes him sound like a ghost on Sesame Street. Not to mention, the organ sound throughout the song adds to that haunting effect, which is not needed.
That’s before you even get into the song’s lyrics, as the band complain about their son, who has a scar across his face, wears a hearing aid and is now getting all of their wife’s attention. It’s a strange-sounding ode to jealousy that the music world would have been better off without.
‘Fire In The Hole’
‘Fire In The Hole’ starts incredibly well. The combination of keys and drums at the tempo they’re played has a great rock sound, mirroring Elton John. The piano solo is scattered and imperfect but in a way that sounds edgy and has an element of grit. It’s all quite a bit of fun until they start to overcomplicate the track with unnecessary sounds.
A droning guitar sound almost mimics a cat that comes in towards the end of the first instrumental. That guitar continues and means you can never sit comfortably for the rest of the song. The main frustration with this tune is how close Steely Dan came to having something but got so swept up in the technology available to them, so swept up in whether they could, they forgot to consider whether they should.
‘Everything You Did’
From the very beginning of this track, the distorted guitar and clean piano mix don’t sound right. The opening line of “where did the bastard run” comes across as way too tough for an instrumental that sounds goofy. Once again, the band overcomplicated the song with random effects here and there, which took away from it rather than added anything.
Some of the lyrics stink of jealousy, too. For instance, the famous line “turn up the eagles, the neighbours are listening” references a couple arguing, so they need to turn up the music playing so that others don’t hear as much. Walter Becket confesses he had an ex girlfirend who was massively into the Eagles, and he used to get jealous, which is how he came up with that line.
‘Two Against Nature’
The percussion in this song starts well and is funky and exciting to listen to. The downfall is another reflection of the band’s inability to fully understand the influences they have at play. There is bossa nova here, rock and free jazz, all of which could blend together well in better hands but don’t work here.
The song is the title track from the band’s eighth studio album. The LP does have some half-decent songs on it, and it’s hard to try and work out what it was about this haphazard and tough-to-listen-to-track that made Steely Dan want to draw so much attention to it.
‘Blues Beach’
There are a lot of theories surrounding what this song means. In some cases, that can mean ambiguous and well-written lyrics, but for this track, it’s hard to consider it anything other than fans looking for something more profound than the surface-level mediocrity the tune offers up.
The instrumentation doesn’t change throughout the song, and the vocal melody is incredibly underwhelming, almost as if the rhythm has been improvised and never revisited. It is perfect background music, but nothing more than that.
‘Monkey In Your Soul’
It’s hard to tell what instrument is used for the opening riff, but it is incredibly unpleasant, enough to put any listener off the rest of the track. It’s a low-sounding grunting with layers of distortion added, giving off a feral sound that doesn’t fit the song’s other elements.
On top of that, the horn section, which comes in at just under two minutes, sounds bizarre. They are incredibly disjointed and don’t suit the song’s tone in any way whatsoever. If you’re going through Steel Dan’s discography, this is a tune you can probably skip over.
