Katy Lied by Steely Dan

Katy Lied, Steely Dan's fourth album, came out on ABC in March 1975, and it's the first one Walter Becker and Donald Fagen made after they quit the road. With touring behind them, Steely Dan was now a studio-only operation, the two of them plus a revolving cast of session players under Gary Katz's production, and you can hear the perfectionism setting in like a coat of lacquer.

The sound is sleek jazz-rock with the edges filed smooth but the sneer intact: Fagen's cool delivery, slippery chord changes, and lyrics as cryptic and ironic as ever. "Doctor Wu" and "Black Friday" are here, the latter reaching No. 37 on the Hot 100, while "Bad Sneakers" missed it entirely yet became the record's best-known song. It also marks the recording debut of Michael McDonald, whose backing vocals turn up on four songs. It climbed to No. 13 on the album chart and went gold.

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