Aja (album)

Aja (/ˈeɪʒə/, pronounced "Asia") is the sixth studio album by the

Aja
American jazz rock band Steely Dan, released by ABC Records
on September 23, 1977. On the album, band leaders Donald Fagen
and Walter Becker pushed Steely Dan further into experimenting
with different combinations of session players, enlisting the
services of nearly 40 musicians, while pursuing longer, more
sophisticated compositions and arrangements.

The album peaked at number three on the Billboard Top LPs &
Tape chart, and number five on the UK Albums Chart, ultimately
becoming Steely Dan's most commercially successful release. It
spawned the hit singles "Peg", "Deacon Blues", and "Josie".

At the 20th Annual Grammy Awards, Aja won Best Engineered

Recording – Non-Classical, and was nominated for Album of the Studio album by Steely Dan
Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. It Released September 23, 1977
has appeared on many retrospective "greatest albums" lists, with
critics and audiophiles applauding the album's high production Recorded Late 1976–July 1977
standards. In 2010, the album was recognized by the Library of Studio Village Recorders
Congress as being "culturally, historically, or artistically (West Los Angeles) ·
significant" and selected for preservation in the National Producer's Workshop
Recording Registry. and Sound Labs
(Hollywood) · Warner
Recording Bros. (Burbank) · ABC
and A&R (New York
The album was produced by Steely Dan's longtime producer Gary City)
Katz,[1] and features contributions from numerous leading session Genre Jazz rock · yacht rock ·
musicians. The eight-minute-long title track features a jazz-based
pop rock · jazz
chord progression and a solo by saxophonist Wayne Shorter.[2][3]
Co-composer and co-band leader Walter Becker did not perform Length 39:56
on the tracks "Black Cow" or "Peg". Label ABC
Producer Gary Katz
Title and packaging Steely Dan chronology
The Royal Aja Gaucho
The title of the album is pronounced "Asia" (like the continent).[4]
Donald Fagen has said Aja was the name of a Korean woman who Scam (1977) (1980)
(1976)
married the brother of one of his high-school friends.[5] The album
cover features a photograph by Hideki Fujii of Japanese model and
Singles from Aja

1. "Peg"
Released: November 1977
2. "Deacon Blues"
Released: March 1978
actress Sayoko Yamaguchi,[6][7] and was designed by Patricia 3. "Josie"
Mitsui and Geoff Westen. The inside photos of Fagen and Becker Released: August 1978
were taken by Becker and Dorothy A. White.[8]

Marketing and sales

Aja was released by ABC Records[9] on September 23, 1977.[10] In anticipation of the release, Katz urged
the relatively private Fagen and Becker to raise their public profile, and arranged a meeting with Irving
Azoff to discuss employing him as their manager. Fagen initially had reservations, saying: "We were ready
to go blissfully through life without a manager."[1]

With Azoff's connections with record stores and the album being offered at a discounted price, Aja became,
according to Cameron Crowe in the December 1977 issue of Rolling Stone, "one of the season's hottest
albums and by far Steely Dan's fastest-selling ever."[1] It reached the top five of the Billboard Top LPs &
Tape chart within three weeks of its release,[11] and it ultimately peaked at number three, becoming the
band's highest-charting album in the United States. The album was also the group's highest-charting album
in the UK, reaching number five on the UK Albums Chart.[9] According to Billboard, Aja was Steely
Dan's biggest hit and was one of the first albums to be certified Platinum by the Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA).[11]

Attempts to make a surround-sound mix of the album for a release in the late 1990s were scrapped when it
was discovered that the multitrack masters for both "Black Cow" and the title track were missing. Universal
Music canceled plans to release a multichannel SACD version of the album for the same reason. In the liner
notes for the 1999 remastered reissue of the album, Fagen and Becker offered a $600 reward for the
missing masters or any information that leads to their recovery.[12]

Reception and legacy

Reviewing the album in 1977 for Rolling Stone, Retrospective professional reviews
Michael Duffy said that "the conceptual
Review scores
framework of [Steely Dan's] music has shifted
from the pretext of rock & roll toward a smoother, Source Rating
awesomely clean and calculated mutation of [13]
various rock, pop and jazz idioms", while their AllMusic
lyrics "remain as pleasantly obtuse and cynical as Chicago Tribune [14]
ever". He added that the duo's "extreme
intellectual self-consciousness", though it might be Christgau's Record Guide B+[15]
starting to show its limitations with this album, Encyclopedia of Popular Music [16]
"may be precisely the quality that makes Walter
Becker and Donald Fagen the perfect musical MusicHound Rock 4.5/5[17]
antiheroes for the Seventies."[23] Robert Christgau Pitchfork 10/10[18]
of The Village Voice wrote that he "hated this
Q [19]
record for quite a while before I realized that,
unlike The Royal Scam, it was stretching me [20]
Rolling Stone
some", and noted that he was "grateful to find
Fagen and Becker's collegiate cynicism in The Rolling Stone Album Guide [21]

decline", but worried that a preference for longer,

Tom Hull – on the Web A−[22]
more sophisticated songs "could turn into their
fatal flaw".[24] Greg Kot was also lukewarm
toward the band's stylistic departure, later writing in the Chicago Tribune: "The clinical coldness first
evidenced on The Royal Scam is perfected here. Longer, more languid songs replace the acerbic pithiness
of old."[14] Barry Walters was more receptive in a retrospective review for Rolling Stone, saying: "rock has
always excelled at embodying adolescent ache. But it's rare when rock captures the complications of adult
sorrows almost purely with its sound."[20]

Jazz historian Ted Gioia has cited Aja as an example of Steely Dan "proving that pop-rock could equally
benefit from a healthy dose of jazz" during their original tenure, which coincided with a period when rock
musicians were frequently experimenting with jazz idioms and techniques.[25] Amanda Petrusich wrote in
Pitchfork that the album is "as much a jazz record as a pop one",[18] while Ben Ratliff from The New York
Times said it "created a new standard for the relationship between jazz and rock, one that was basically
irreproducible, by Steely Dan or anyone else […] a progressive jazz record with backbeats, a '70s hipster's
extension of what had been Gil Evans's vision two decades earlier."[26] In Dylan Jones' list of the best jazz
albums for GQ, Aja ranked number 62.[27]

The album has been cited by music journalists as one of the best test recordings for audiophiles, due to its
high production standards.[28][29][30] Walters noted in his review that "the album's surreal sonic perfection,
its melodic and harmonic complexity - music so technically demanding its creators had to call in A-list
session players to realize the sounds they heard in their heads but could not play, even on the instruments
they had mastered."[20] Reviewing Aja 's 2007 all-analog LP reissue, Ken Kessler of the Hi-Fi News &
Record Review gave top marks to both the recording and performance qualities, and called the album
"sublime jazz-rock that hasn't aged at all - unless you consider 'intelligence' passe - it is everything you
expected the painfully hip/cool Becker and Fagen to deliver."[31]

Accolades

Aja frequently appears on retrospective "greatest albums" lists. In 1991, France's Rock & Folk included it
on a list of the 250 best albums released since 1966, when the magazine began publication. In 1999, the
album was ranked number 59 on the national Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth's "Top 99 Albums of All
Time" list.[32] In 2000, Aja was voted number 118 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top
1000 Albums.[33] In 2003, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and ranked number 145
on Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time";[34] it maintained the same spot on the
2012 update of the list,[35] and rose to number 63 on the 2020 version. In 2006, Aja was included in the
book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[36] In 2010, the album was recognized by the Library
of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant" and selected for preservation in the
National Recording Registry; the same year, De La Soul's 1989 debut album 3 Feet High and Rising,
which sampled Aja, was also added to the Registry.[37][38] Based on such rankings, the aggregate website
Acclaimed Music lists Aja as the 318th most-acclaimed album in history, as well as the 95th-most
acclaimed album of the 1970s.[32]

The singer Bilal listed Aja among his top-25 favorite albums, explaining that "It's a great body of work. It
seems very thought out from beginning to end, every song just had a certain vibe. The songwriting to the
sound and the look of the album, the whole package was just very well thought out."[39]

Classic Albums episode

In 1999, Aja was the topic of an episode of the British documentary series Classic Albums. The episode
features a song-by-song study of the album (except for "I Got the News", which is played during the
closing credits), as well as interviews with, among others, Steely Dan co-founders Walter Becker and
Donald Fagen, and new, live-in-studio versions of songs from the album. Becker and Fagen also play back
several of the rejected guitar solos for "Peg", which were recorded before Jay Graydon produced the take
used for the album.

Discussing the sound of the album, Andy Gill says: "Jazz-rock was a fundamental part of the 70s musical
landscape […] [Steely Dan] wasn't rock or pop music with ideas above its station, and it wasn't jazzers
slumming […] it was a very well-forged alloy of the two – you couldn't separate the pop music from the
jazz in their music." On the same topic, British musician Ian Dury says he hears elements of legendary jazz
musicians like Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Art Blakey on the album. He continues: "Well, Aja's
got a sound that lifts your heart up, and it's the most consistent up-full, heart-warming […] even though, it
is a classic LA kinda sound. You wouldn't think it was recorded anywhere else in the world. It's got
California through its blood, even though they are boys from New York […] They've got a skill that can
make images that aren't puerile and don't make you think you've heard it before […] very 'Hollywood
filmic' in a way, the imagery is very imaginable, in a visual sense."[5]

Yacht rock
"Home at Last"
0:00 / 0:00

30-second sample

Problems playing this file? See media help.

In retrospective appraisals, Aja has been discussed by music journalists as an important release in the
development of yacht rock. In an article for Spin in 2009, Chuck Eddy listed it among the genre's eight
essential albums.[40] Writing for uDiscoverMusic in 2019, Paul Sexton said that, with the album, Steely
Dan "announced their ever-greater exploration of jazz influences", which would lead to "their yacht-rock
masterpiece": 1980's Gaucho.[41] Patrick Hosken of MTV News said that both Aja and Gaucho show how
"great yacht rock is also more musically ambitious than it might seem, tying blue-eyed soul and jazz to funk
and R&B".[42] Aja was included in Vinyl Me, Please magazine's list of "The 10 Best Yacht Rock Albums
to Own on Vinyl", with an accompanying essay that said: "Steely Dan’s importance to yacht rock can’t be
overstated. […] Arguably the Dan is smoothest on the 1980 smash Gaucho, but Aja finds Walter Becker
and Donald Fagen comfortably hitting a middle-ground stride […] as a mainstream hit factory while
remaining expansive and adventurous".[43] John Lawler of Something Else! wrote that "The song and
performance that best exemplifies the half-time, funky, laid (way) back in the beat shuffle within the jazz-
pop environment of the mid- to late- 70s can be found on 'Home at Last.' Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie feeds off
Chuck Rainey’s bass with righteous grooves and masterful off-beat fills with alacrity in this tight band
favorite."[44]

Track listing
All tracks are written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen

Side one
No. Title Length
1. "Black Cow" 5:10
2. "Aja" 8:00
3. "Deacon Blues" 7:37
Side two
 No. Title Length
4. "Peg" 3:57
5. "Home at Last" 5:36
6. "I Got the News" 5:07
7. "Josie" 4:31
Total length: 39:56

Personnel
Adapted from the liner notes.[45]

Side A

1. "Black Cow"
Donald Fagen – lead vocals, synthesizer
Paul Humphrey – drums
Chuck Rainey – bass guitar
Victor Feldman – Fender Rhodes
Joe Sample – clavinet
Larry Carlton – guitar
Tom Scott – tenor saxophone
Clydie King, Venetta Fields, Sherlie Matthews, Rebecca Louis – backing vocals
2. "Aja"
Donald Fagen – lead vocals, synthesizer, police whistle, backing vocals
Steve Gadd – drums
Chuck Rainey – bass guitar
Larry Carlton, Walter Becker, Denny Dias – guitars
Joe Sample – Fender Rhodes
Michael Omartian – piano
Victor Feldman – percussion, marimba
Wayne Shorter – tenor saxophone
Timothy B. Schmit – backing vocals
3. "Deacon Blues"
Donald Fagen – lead vocals, synthesizer
Bernard Purdie – drums
Walter Becker – bass guitar
Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour – guitars
Victor Feldman – Fender Rhodes
Pete Christlieb – tenor saxophone
Clydie King, Sherlie Matthews, Venetta Fields – backing vocals
Dean Parks - acoustic guitar[46]

Side B

1.
 4. "Peg"
Donald Fagen – lead vocals
Rick Marotta – drums
Chuck Rainey – bass guitar
Paul Griffin – Fender Rhodes, backing vocals
Don Grolnick – clavinet
Steve Khan – guitar
Jay Graydon – guitar solo
Victor Feldman, Gary Coleman – percussion
Tom Scott – Lyricon
Michael McDonald – backing vocals
5. "Home at Last"
Donald Fagen – lead vocals, synthesizer (solo), backing vocals
Bernard Purdie – drums
Chuck Rainey – bass guitar
Larry Carlton – guitar
Walter Becker – guitar solo
Victor Feldman – piano, vibraphone
Timothy B. Schmit – backing vocals
6. "I Got the News"
Donald Fagen – lead vocals, synthesizers
Ed Greene – drums
Chuck Rainey – bass guitar
Victor Feldman – piano, vibraphone, percussion
Dean Parks – guitar
Walter Becker, Larry Carlton – guitar solos
Michael McDonald, Clydie King, Venetta Fields, Sherlie Matthews, Rebecca Louis –
backing vocals
7. "Josie"
Donald Fagen – lead vocals, synthesizers, backing vocals
Jim Keltner – drums, percussion
Chuck Rainey – bass guitar
Victor Feldman – Fender Rhodes
Larry Carlton, Dean Parks – guitars
Walter Becker – guitar solo
Timothy B. Schmit – backing vocals

Tom Scott – horn arrangements and conducting of horns

Jim Horn, Bill Perkins, Wayne Shorter, Pete Christlieb, Plas Johnson, Tom Scott, Jackie
Kelso – saxophones, flutes
Chuck Findley, Lou McCreary, Dick "Slyde" Hyde – brass
Walter Becker, Donald Fagen, Larry Carlton, Dean Parks, Michael Omartian – rhythm
arrangements

Production

Stephen Diener – executive producer

 Gary Katz – producer
Roger Nichols – executive engineer, engineer
Elliot Scheiner, Bill Schnee, Al Schmitt – engineers
Lenise Bent, Ken Klinger, Linda Tyler, Ed Rack, Joe Bellamy, Ron Pangaliman – assistant
engineers
Bernie Grundman – mastering engineer
Barbara Miller – production coordinatior
Stuart "Dinky" Dawson – sound consultant
Irving Azoff – management
Leonard Freedman – bagman
Karen Stanley – covert operations
Oz Studios[8] – art direction
Patricia Mitsui, Geoff Westen – design
Hideki Fujii – cover photo
Walter Becker, Dorothy A. White – inside photos of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker
Michael Phalen (Walter Becker & Donald Fagen), Stephen Diener – liner notes

Reissue personnel

Roger Nichols – remastering engineer

Beth Stempel – coordinator
Vartan – art direction
Mike Diehl – design
Daniel Levitin – consultant

Outtakes
The sessions for Aja produced several outtakes, including "The Bear" and "Stand by the Seawall" (the
latter title was given to two completely different outtakes recorded during the sessions). None of these
songs were ever officially released, but "The Bear" was later played live on Steely Dan's 2011 Shuffle
Diplomacy Tour.[47]

Awards
Grammy Awards
 Year Winner Category

1978 Aja Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical

Charts

Weekly charts Year-end charts

Peak Chart (1978) Position

Chart (1977)
position
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[55] 49
[48] 9
Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)
US Billboard 200[56] 5
Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[49] 9

New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[50] 3

Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)[51] 10

Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)[52] 35

UK Albums (OCC)[53] 5

US Billboard 200[54] 3

Certifications

Region Certification Certified units/sales

Canada (Music Canada)[57] 2× Platinum 200,000^

United Kingdom (BPI)[58] Gold 100,000‡

United States (RIAA)[59] 2× Platinum 2,000,000^

^
Shipments figures based on certification alone.
‡
Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

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49. "Dutchcharts.nl – Steely Dan – Aja" (https://dutchcharts.nl/showitem.asp?interpret=Steely+D
an&titel=Aja&cat=a) (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
50. "Charts.nz – Steely Dan – Aja" (https://charts.nz/showitem.asp?interpret=Steely+Dan&titel=
Aja&cat=a). Hung Medien. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
51. "Norwegiancharts.com – Steely Dan – Aja" (https://norwegiancharts.com/showitem.asp?inte
rpret=Steely+Dan&titel=Aja&cat=a). Hung Medien. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
52. "Swedishcharts.com – Steely Dan – Aja" (https://swedishcharts.com/showitem.asp?interpret
=Steely+Dan&titel=Aja&cat=a). Hung Medien. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
53. "Steely Dan | Artist | Official Charts" (https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/_/Steely%20Dan/).
UK Albums Chart. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
54. "Steely Dan Chart History (Billboard 200)" (https://www.billboard.com/artist/Steely-Dan/chart
-history/TLP). Billboard. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
55. "Top Selling Albums of 1978 — The Official New Zealand Music Chart" (https://nztop40.co.n
z/chart/albums?chart=3867). Recorded Music New Zealand. Retrieved January 26, 2022.
56. "Top Billboard 200 Albums – Year-End 1978" (https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/19
78/top-billboard-200-albums). Billboard. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
57. "Canadian album certifications – Steely Dan – Aja" (https://musiccanada.com/gold-platinu
m/?_gp_search=Aja%20Steely+Dan). Music Canada.
58. "British album certifications – Steely Dan – Aja" (https://www.bpi.co.uk/award/350-1004-2).
British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved March 8, 2022.
59. "American album certifications – Steely Dan – Aja" (https://www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/?tab
_active=default-award&ar=Steely+Dan&ti=Aja&format=Album&type=#search_section).
Recording Industry Association of America.

Further reading
Sweet, Brian (2010). " 'Aja'—Steely Dan (1977)" (http://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national
-recording-preservation-board/documents/aja--FINAL.pdf) (PDF). Library of Congress.
 "Essay accompanying the album's addition to the National Recording Registry"

External links
Aja (https://www.discogs.com/master/16921) at Discogs (list of releases)
"Aja: Complete Lyrics" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090319054500/http://www.steelydan.
com/lyraja.html). steelydan.com. Archived from the original (http://www.steelydan.com/lyraja.
html) on March 19, 2009.
"Promotional Video" (http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/?c=1675)., courtesy of The Museum of
Classic Chicago Television
"Steely Dan: The Making of Aja" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9MusH-QijY) on
YouTube
Official YouTube playlist (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nNSt2pxzqur9Ol
Uok2h9mJDnHQ1YqFA-8)

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