Ranking the 5 Best Songs on ‘Pretzel Logic,’ Steely Dan’s Quirky Standout of an Album

On their third album, Steely Dan got a little weirder, funnier, and more obscure. Pretzel Logic, released in 1974, is way out there much of the time, making the moments when Donald Fagen and Walter Becker approach listeners directly and without irony hit even harder.

The album also finds the band solidifying its musical attack, as Fagen and Becker settled comfortably into the idea of being casting directors for a rotating batch of session players. There’s no real weak cut on the record (even the way-bizarre “Through with Buzz” is captivating), but here are the five best in our opinion.

5. “Pretzel Logic”

You didn’t think that Steely Dan would make a simple blues song simple, did you? The framework of a 12-bar is there, but they spruce it up with sumptuous musical touches. Those horns punch in at all the right places, Fagen’s electric piano is sly and insinuating, and the vocal harmonies, part Fagen and part future Eagle Timothy B. Schmit, leave an indelible impact. Lest the lyrics come too close to the usual blues phrases, the narrator instead goes on about traveling through time, which only goes to show how lost he feels in the present: They say the times are changing but I just don’t know.

4. “Night by Night”

This is the funkiest track on Pretzel Logic, and much of the credit goes to drummer Jeff Porcaro, who was all of 18 years old when did his part here. David Paich, Porcaro’s future bandmate in Toto, lays down the clavinet part that adds the grit. Jeff “Skunk” Baxter stands out on lead guitar, when he isn’t laying back and letting the wall of horns do their work. Fagen’s narrator has clear eyes about the ruthlessness of the world around him. But he also has the survival instincts to get by: But until my ship comes in / I’ll live night by night.

3. “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”

There aren’t too many songs in the Steely Dan that you might call uplifting. And even when the narrator in this track tries to cheer up the person he’s addressing, he does so in somewhat baffling ways (a squonk’s tears is one of those crazy phrases to which you sing along without any clue to what the heck it means.) But sure enough, Fagen ‘s voice drips with empathy as he promises things will get better, even if he does so in a self-deprecating way. (He doesn’t seem to include himself in the major dude category, after all). Baxter rises to the occasion here as well with a sweet solo.

2. “Barrytown”

One of the most underrated songs in the Steely Dan catalog, “Barrytown” is only three short verses and a middle eight, and yet invites a myriad possible interpretations. Many have surmised the narrator is disgusted with the person he’s addressing, because they’ve become indoctrinated into a group of people (a cult perhaps) he doesn’t like. But you could also look at the song as the narrator incriminating himself for his narrow-mindedness, as evidenced by this self-own: I just read the daily news and swear by every word. As singable as Steely Dan gets.

1. “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number”

Donald Fagen has hinted in interviews he doesn’t get the big deal about this track, the highest-charting in the band’s history. It’s straightforward lyrically in a way that few Dan songs are; so straightforward, in fact, that people are often trying to give it strange, off-base interpretations. Why can’t it just be a succinct, exquisitely sad song of unrequited love? The little touches matter—from the anguish in Jeff “Skunk” Baxter’s guitar solo to the way Fagen’s voice rises in urgency as the song progresses. And the narrator realizes that Rikki might indeed lose that number out of sheer indifference.

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