Katy Lied

Concept

The album cover features a picture of a katydid, a "singing" (stridulating) insect related to crickets and grasshoppers. This is a pun on the album's title; the "singing" of a katydid sounds as though they're saying "Katy did, Katy didn't." Lyrics in the song "Doctor Wu" include "Katy tried, I was halfway crucified" and "Katy lies, you can see it in her eyes".

The track "Black Friday", which was released as the first single from the album, relates the story of a crooked speculator who makes his fortune and absconds to Australia. Muswellbrook, a town in New South Wales, was chosen to fit in with the lyric, as Fagen later explained: "It was the place most far away from LA we could think of ... and, of course it fitted the metre of the song and rhymed with book". The track features Michael Omartian on piano and David Paich on Hohner electric piano.

Critical reception

In a contemporary review for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau said Katy Lied may be Steely Dan's "biggest" album, "but I find it slightly disappointing" on a musical level, citing the loss of lead guitarist Skunk Baxter and what he perceived as "cool, cerebral, one-dimensional" progressive jazz and white jazz influences. He nonetheless admitted to playing the record frequently and named it the third best album of the year for the 1975 Pazz & Jop critics poll, where it finished sixth best. John Mendelsohn was more critical in Rolling Stone, believing that "however immaculately tasteful and intelligent" Steely Dan's music may be in theory, it did not register with him emotionally and remained "exemplarily well-crafted and uncommonly intelligent schlock". Mendelsohn found the lyrics interesting but inscrutable, the musicianship tasteful and well-performed but not stimulating, and Fagen's singing unique-sounding but seemingly passionless.

Katy Lied was later called "anonymous, absolutely impeccable swing-pop" by Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe, who observed "no cheap displays of human emotion", while Travis Elborough felt it was not on par with 1974's Pretzel Logic or 1977's Aja "but up there as jazz rock staples go". Stephen Thomas Erlewine deemed it a more refined version of Pretzel Logic and "another excellent record" from Steely Dan in his retrospective review for AllMusic. In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Rob Sheffield said the album completed a 1970s trilogy of albums, starting with Countdown to Ecstasy (1973), that was "a rock version of Chinatown, a film noir tour of L.A.'s decadent losers, showbiz kids, and razor boys".

Track listing

All songs written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.

Side one

1. "Black Friday" – 3:40
2. "Bad Sneakers" – 3:16
3. "Rose Darling" – 2:59
4. "Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More" – 3:12
5. "Doctor Wu" – 3:59

Side two

6. "Everyone's Gone to the Movies" – 3:41
7. "Your Gold Teeth II" – 4:12
8. "Chain Lightning" – 2:57
9. "Any World (That I'm Welcome To)" – 3:56
10. "Throw Back the Little Ones" – 3:11

Steely Dan

Additional musicians

Production

Charts

Album

Pop Singles