The Nightfly

The Nightfly was recorded over about eight months in 1981 and 1982 and mixed in ten days, among the first fully digital pop recordings. Roger Nichols was chief engineer with Elliot Scheiner; Bob Ludwig mastered it at Masterdisk. Fagen played vocals, synthesizers, organ and electric piano and wrote the horn arrangements with Rob Mounsey; some thirty musicians appear, among them the guitarists Larry Carlton, Hugh McCracken, Rick Derringer, Dean Parks and Steve Khan, the bassists Anthony Jackson, Chuck Rainey, Marcus Miller and Will Lee, the drummers Jeff Porcaro, James Gadson, Ed Greene and Steve Jordan, and the Brecker brothers on horns. He later described a breakdown during the mixing, followed by writer's block.

The concept is the overnight show of a disc jockey at the fictional jazz station WJAZ, a figure Fagen said he made up from the disc jockeys he heard as a kid. He said he wanted the album to be a little brighter and lighter than a Steely Dan record and tried to write the songs with as little irony as possible. It reached number 11 on the Billboard 200 on November 27, 1982, went platinum in the US and the UK, and earned seven nominations at the 1983 Grammys, including album of the year and best engineered recording. AllMusic gave it four and a half stars and Christgau an A, and the Wall Street Journal called it one of pop music's sneakiest masterpieces. It became a hi-fi demonstration record, and Pro Sound News called "I.G.Y." the Free Bird of professional audio.