Steely Dan: Yacht Rock?

On my car’s XM radio, I like to use the feature to ‘favorite’ an artist so it flags me if they are being played on any of the other XM channels. One of my many favorites is Steely Dan. When I’m alerted to a favorite being played, it takes me to the channel that is broadcasting it currently.  So why does XM take me to the “Yacht Rock” station when they’re playing Steely Dan?

And what is yacht rock anyway?

Wikipedia says it draws on sources such as smooth soul, smooth jazz, R&B, and disco; common stylistic traits include high-quality production, clean vocals, and a focus on light, catchy melodies.

I found lots of opinions about yacht rock. One of the better ones was written by Steven Orlofsky of The Week magazine: “The term took off as a pejorative, defining its listeners as wealthy boat enthusiasts, grouping it near 'dad rock' as the lamest of the lame, the music you wouldn't be caught dead listening to if you knew what was cool.”

So how has Steely Dan become synonymous with Yacht Rock?

Let’s first start with their name. Steely Dan has always been just two guys: Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who write the songs and then assemble incredibly talented musicians in the studio to produce the record.  Their first LP released in 1972 was titled Can’t Buy a Thrill (inspired by a line in the Dylan song “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”). The cover art features prostitutes lined up on a street in France. Digging a bit deeper, Becker and Fagen must have been fans of the beat writer William S. Burroughs, especially his novel, Naked Lunch, published in 1959. One chapter in the book refers to a ‘steam-powered strap-on dildo’ by the name of – you guessed it, Steely Dan.

That inside joke is just a hint of the many sardonic references made in their lyrics.  Take one verse from the popular hit single off their debut album, “Reelin in the Years” (you likely know it by its iconic solo by session guitarist Elliott Randall):

You been tellin' me you're a genius
Since you were seventeen
In all the time I've known you
I still don't know what you mean

Maybe the music is so slickly produced, we don’t even pay attention to the many swipes and sarcastic asides in the lyrics. In fact, they can be downright vague. One reviewer said "the lyrics baffle me; maybe they know what they're talking about, but I can't get a clue.”  And, they can be dark. On their most commercially successful album, Aja, the storyteller wants a name for the loser that he is…”call me Deacon Blues” after he “drinks scotch whisky all night long and dies behind the wheel.”  That’s dark.

This doesn’t sound like carefree yacht rock to me. Sure, the instrumentation can lull you with its jazzy, catchy groove. But clearly these guys are having fun juxtaposing mellow sounds with their sly lyrics.  Rolling Stone’s review of Aja said that "the conceptual framework of [Steely Dan's] music has shifted from the pretext of rock & roll toward a smoother, awesomely clean and calculated mutation of various rock, pop and jazz idioms," while their lyrics "remain as pleasantly obtuse and cynical as ever."

As a college sophomore at the University of Illinois back in 1974, I reviewed Steely Dan’s third album, Pretzel Logic for the Daily Illini. I called it “sophisticated, fresh, and innovative; but a difficult album to classify.” As it turned out, that album produced their most successful single, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” Again, it used obscure lyrics that some thought were about marijuana, but it was possibly their most straightforward song about a woman who Fagen had a crush on in college.

The back-to-back releases of Aja and Gaucho in 1977 and 1980 are most often cited as classic examples of yacht rock. Ironically, the term was coined in 2005 by an on-line video series of that name, but refers to music created from around 1975 to 1984. Some cite Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” from 1979 as the ultimate yacht rock song. Well, ok, I get that.  But compare it to “Hey Nineteen” from Gaucho. Here’s a song about an aging hipster trying to hit on a nineteen-year-old woman. He becomes disillusioned when she doesn’t recognize Aretha Franklin playing on the stereo. This is adult stuff to ponder, not “Just a dream and the wind to carry me, And soon I will be free.”

I’ve always imagined “Hey Nineteen” tells the story of a man alone in a bar, Aretha on the jukebox, and he sees a beautiful, younger woman. He imagines how the conversation might go (guys may better understand this preparation and rehearsal of a potential chat). Before actually speaking to her, his imagined conversation ends with “No we got nothing in common, No we can't talk at all.”  Then, as the song appears to wind down, in a coda we hear the lines about “The Cuervo Gold, The Fine Columbian.”  I imagine him walking home alone just prior to the coda, then enjoying his Cuervo Gold and Columbian weed all by himself at home. While these lyrics play out, we’re treated to an incredibly catchy, salsa-inflected beat, with gorgeous bouncy harmonies. It’s as if he’s just fine how the night progressed, along with his aging circumstances.

That’s just my interpretation. I’m guessing there are many others. Isn’t that what makes a great song? In my book, that’s not yacht rock. But hey, at least I know where to find Steely Dan on satellite radio.