Inauthenticity and the Art of Subversion: The Aja Experience

Few bands’ legacies are as confounding as Steely Dan’s. Despite being one of the most beloved and acclaimed groups of the ’70s, they’ve largely faded from the rock canon. Aside from “Aja,” their token “classic,” and maybe their single “Kid Charlemagne,” the Dream Daddy-certified greatest guitar solo ever, most of their work has been largely forgotten and omitted from critical discussion of the ’70s. To be fair, the band didn’t do itself any favors. Over time, as Steely Dan more obviously became lead singer Donald Fagen’s and guitarist Walter Becker’s own pet project, their sound gradually grew more affected, referential, and generally inaccessible to the point where gatekeepers ignore or deride them. But the biggest single knock against Steely Dan is how cold and inauthentic they feel.

So much of musical appeal across popular genres is predicated on a sense of authenticity and emotion. There are increasingly many acclaimed albums, like Mount Eerie’s “A Crow Looked at Me” or Frank Ocean’s “Blonde,” rooted in these sensibilities. Steely Dan, however, seems to take pride in sounding as distant as possible. Fagen sings disaffected lyrics in a soulless, nasal whine, and the songs—their sophisticated chords, jazzy progressions, and seamless mixes—tend to be so utterly flawless that they almost sound passionless. Rockists have retroactively dismissed Steely Dan for having a wimpy or soft sound. Unlike Fleetwood Mac’s, another band criticized for this sound, their songs never had anything to do with Becker or Fagen themselves. Their protagonists were generally unlovable losers, like the narrator of “Peg,” who tries to convince the titular character to become a pinup girl. Moreover, in an era that glamorized sole authorship, Steely Dan had a rotating cavalcade of some of the top jazz musicians in the country that they used whenever needed. The band’s relentless work ethic and technical songwriting skill make it difficult to fault them on any objective grounds. This makes their albums frustratingly slippery for would-be critics.

But criticism of Steely Dan as soulless and as inauthentic obscures just how brilliant they are. In few places is this more obvious than on “Aja,” the penultimate album of their original run. First of all, the album’s production is in contention for being the greatest ever. Every component feels isolated and clear, yet meshes spectacularly. Fagen and Becker understood their vision and assembled the personnel to make it happen. From the highest level to the microscopic, they prove themselves masters of structure: Songs feature complex, anticipation-building introductions, accessible but fresh melodies, dazzling chord resolutions, choruses and verses that musically complement each other perfectly, and solos that last just long enough.

What’s most illuminative, however, is the typically stellar, Faulkneresque imagery of the album. While all their albums possess this evocative mythologizing of lowlives, “Aja” is where Steely Dan’s imagery is most unified. Named as a reference to a Louis Armstrong quote mistakenly labelling bebop “Chinese music,” “Aja” weaves four novel concepts into its core: bebop musicians seeking fulfilment, a California sound, pure jazz rock, and a sense of odyssey, all shrouded in Fagen and Becker’s acerbic wit and masterful technique. While its status as the best Steely Dan album is debatable, its unity and coherence as a pseudo-concept album helps cement Fagen and Becker as the witty, subversive geniuses the canon never should have forgotten.

While their previous albums tended to feature a variety of lowlives trying and failing to succeed in a variety of ways, “Aja” focuses on one theme: bebop musicians searching for adventure and enlightenment in places commonly derided. In the title track, it’s a mental institution. In “Deacon Blues,” it’s hedonism. Their protagonists’ fates are always ominous, but Fagen sings as though he takes special glee in their demise. There’s a strange pleasantness in casting away all societal concerns and succumbing to a journey for enlightenment that can only end poorly. Although “Home At Last” is the only song that’s a formal homage to Homer’s “Odyssey” (“Still I remain tied to the mast”), all of “Aja” is about a similar spiritual journey. The destination is not home but a sense of real enlightenment. The journey never really reaches completion—the songs’ leads always succumb to their sirens. But “Aja,” if nothing else, is about embracing their call, and doing so gleefully.

To create a sound for such an album, Fagen and Becker crafted a masterful, laid back style that nonetheless emphasize the talent of their backing musicians, some of the best studio musicians in the world. Compared to the dark undertones of their previous album ( “The Royal Scam”), “Aja” is sunny, if less emotional. At the surface, it feels like easy listening music. This pleasantness belies a sort of depressing sleaziness as the main characters succumb to misfortune. This is why people consider “Aja”’s sound California-inspired. It bears some curious similarities with “Annie Hall,” where quintessential New York Jews use the imagery of the West Coast to explore ideas of material and spiritual happiness. Where “Aja” differs is in the way that, instead of pulling away, it leans into this imagery, embracing smooth jazz. By this point, Steely Dan had been moving towards jazz rock for some time, largely beginning on 1974’s “Pretzel Logic,” their second truly great album. But until “Aja” they had never totally given in. On “Aja” the shift is almost radical, a departure from guitar-heavy rock in favor of smooth, pleasant jazz. In a jazz setting, Becker and Fagen are especially masterful. Everything is immaculately tight, designed for maximum pleasure. Their rotating cast of brilliant personnel fills any roles they need, often investing excruciating amounts of labor in perfecting certain sounds. Long considered a listening standard for audiophiles, “Aja” represents the apex of Steely Dan’s sonic experimentation.

Maybe they are cold, maybe they are totally inauthentic. But if they can create works like “Aja,” does it even matter? The smooth sound, the witty depiction of demise, and the overall technical mastery all combine to create this perfectly uncool masterpiece that sounds nothing like anything around it. On “Aja,” Fagen and Becker bucked the norms of commercial music and succeeded at the highest level.

In an era of rebellion, Steely Dan was the most subversive band. As punk took over and brought its ethic of speed, energy, and activism, Steely Dan’s songs grew more methodical and passionless. Jazz was dying out in popularity, but Fagen and Becker only embraced it more. As people criticized them for sounding so insincere and calculated, they embraced their disconnectedness. They rebelled against virtually all norms of contemporary mainstream music to create “Aja,” proving that sometimes, rejecting authenticity is the coolest thing to do.

—Staff writers Edward M. Litwin's and Trevor J. Levin's column, "Sound and Vision," evaluates the cultural legacy of the late 1970s, one album at a time.