On the one hand, Steely Dan’s 1972 debut album is home to some of the most definitive and best-known songs in 1970s American rock; on the other, it’s barely a glimpse of where the band went next. Having bonded over Beat poetry and 1950s jazz—not to mention a shared sense of humour so dry and bitter, it stings more than a half-century later—college students Donald Fagen and Walter Becker tried their hand at selling pop songs to others before effectively realising nobody was weird enough to play their music but them. The Steely Dan sound was too restrained to qualify as jazz, too sophisticated to count as rock and too obscure to be categorised as pop. Yet on Can’t Buy a Thrill, Fagen and Becker managed to stretch the parameters of all three genres in ways that made the group seem totally (if quietly) radical compared to most of what was going on the radio at the time.

As the duo put it in the album’s belated liner notes, Fagen and Becker had arrived in California with a book of songs that had to be “adjusted and refined to take into account the new musical environment in which we found ourselves operating, and also to reflect our belated understanding of the aesthetic shortcomings of some of our less-than-accessible, more doggedly surrealist efforts.” For the English speakers out there, that translates into such radio-dominating Can’t Buy a Thrill breakthroughs as “Do It Again”, “Reelin’ In the Years” and “Dirty Work.”

As successful as the album became, it also established Steely Dan as a kind of cult band subversively worming their way through the digestive tract of commercial pop. These were the guys in the corner snickering about something the rest of the party didn’t and couldn’t understand. But while Fagen and Becker may have been arrogant, they were also outcasts. One former tour mate described the duo as the Manson and Starkweather of rock ’n’ roll, a reference to Charles Manson and the spree killer Charles Starkweather (for their part, Fagen and Becker later joked that they weren’t sure who was supposed to be which). When punk, with all its cynicism and sarcasm, came into the picture later in the decade, you’d have to squint to see its resemblance to Steely Dan. But on Can’t Buy a Thrill, it’s definitely there: “You been tellin’ me you’re a genius since you were 17,” Fagen sneers on “Reelin’ in the Years”. “In all the time I’ve known you I still don’t know what you mean.”

Tracklisting

1. Do It Again (5:56)
2. Dirty Work (3:08)
3. Kings (3:45)
4. Midnite Cruiser (4:09)
5. Only A Fool Would Say That (2:54)
6. Reelin’ In The Years (4:35)
7. Fire In The Hole (3:26)
8. Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me) (4:20)
9. Change Of The Guard (3:38)
10. Turn That Heartbeat Over Again (4:58)

Apple Music

Videos

Do It Again

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• Dirty Work
• Kings
• Midnite Cruiser
• Only A Fool Would Say That
• Reelin In The Years
• Fire In The Hole
• Brooklyn Owes The Charmer Under Me
• Change Of The Guard
• Turn That Heartbeat Over Again

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