Can’t Buy a Thrill by Steely Dan

Can't Buy a Thrill, Steely Dan's debut, came out on ABC in November 1972, cut that August at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles with Gary Katz producing. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, a pair of Bard College wiseguys who had moved west and rounded up a band, wrote the songs, and already they sound like nobody else on the radio.

This is a record that won't sit still: soft rock one minute, pop the next, then a slinky detour into jazz, with Latin rhythms creeping in at the edges. "Do It Again" rides a hypnotic groove, "Dirty Work" goes down smooth as a hotel-bar nightcap, and the lyrics are cryptic, sly little puzzles that seem to be laughing at something you haven't figured out yet. It went platinum on the back of "Do It Again" and "Reelin' In the Years", and it has turned up on plenty of greatest-albums lists since.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.