Album · Steely Dan
Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan
Pretzel Logic is an album by Steely Dan, released in 1974. 3 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 20 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Rikki Don't Lose That Number”, on 16 lists with a best position of #134.
Pretzel Logic, Steely Dan's third album, rolled out on ABC Records on February 20, 1974, and it's the sound of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen outgrowing the idea of a band. Gary Katz produced it at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, and while the full quintet (Becker, Fagen, Denny Dias, Jim Hodder and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter) is here one last time, no single track uses all five of them; a crew of slick Los Angeles session players does plenty of the heavy lifting instead.
What comes out is pop rock with jazz fusion in its bloodstream: tight, sly, sophisticated songs that go down easy and leave a funny aftertaste. "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" became their biggest hit and put them back on the radio after the previous album stalled. The tour that followed wore Becker and Fagen out so badly that they quit the road, broke up the quintet and made Steely Dan a studio-only outfit, while Baxter headed off to the Doobie Brothers.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Pretzel Logic on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rikki Don't Lose That Number | 16 | #134 | – | 1997–2026 | |
| 2 | Any Major Dude Will Tell You | 3 | #321 | – | 2016–2022 | |
| 3 | Barrytown | 1 | #474 | – | 2009 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.