92. The Nightfly - Donald Fagen (part of the Steely Dan Series)

As you know by now, Steely Dan's core identity is the songwriting and performative partnership of Fagen & Becker. And with the group's dissolution in the early 1980s, the partners would occasionally step out on their own and create art under their own name. With Becker abandoning the continent and seeking sobriety and a general life reset after Gaucho, it was left to Fagen to make the first solo record of the creative partnership.

The Nightfly came out in 1982, and it sounds...VERY MUCH like a Steely Dan album. Even with Becker gone, much of the machinery that made Gaucho was still in action, from the involvement of the engineering and producer staffs to the roster of ace session musicians. Add in Fagen's vocals and the expected intelligence of the lyrics, and many critics viewed The Nightfly as the natural progression of the Steely Dan creative spirit --- to the point that many critics immediately assumed that Fagen had done all the heavy lifting for Steely Dan and that Becker's contributions must have been comparatively minimal.

But scratch the surface of The Nightfly and you'll notice something that rarely shined through on prior Steely Dan albums --- emotions of hope, wonder, wistfulness, and playfulness. It might have sounded similar but the sentiment was very different in spots. It's lovely, it's meticulous, and it's one of the best albums of the early 1980s, but it's not the automatic carryover from Gaucho that many assumed at the time.