It’s well-known that, due to music industry contracts, it’s often impossible for artists to prevent their music from being used in ways they don’t like. In the instance of Steely Dan seemingly being ...

You could fill a book with all the shady characters you meet in Steely Dan songs. Quantum Criminals is that book. Journalist Alex Pappademas and artist Joan LeMay take a deep dive into the genius of ...

There’s no story anywhere in music like Steely Dan. The Seventies jazz-rock masterminds have gone in and out of style over the years, but they’ve never been more popular, more influential, more of a ...

Quantum Criminals, the upcoming book by journalist/critic Alex Pappademas and illustrator Joan LeMay, is a comprehensive Steely Dan biography that doubles as a wild trip through the extended Steely ...

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. Music obsessive that ...

20 years ago today, Steely Dan—the godfathers of yacht rock and ancestors of sleaze—released Everything Must Go, a project that would become their ninth and final album. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker ...

This essay is adapted from Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay’s “Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. A few months after Steely Dan co-founder ...