Steely Dan/YMMV

"This is the night of the expanding man
 * Big Lipped Alligator Moment: Their cover of Duke Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-oo", both in terms of its parent album (1974's Pretzel Logic) and the Dan's career as a whole.
 * Critical Dissonance: The Royal Scam is especially loved by fans, but its often rated by professional music critics as among their lesser albums.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: Many of their songs, but their album Aja is often considered the zenith.
 * Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: Not many due to their largely cynical worldview, but this little gem from "Deacon Blues" counts:

I take one last drag as I aproach the stand

I cried when I wrote this song

sue me if I play too long

This brother is free

I'll be what I want to be"


 * Face of the Band: Started with a full band, but ended up being whittled down to just Fagen and Becker with a bunch of studio musicians.
 * Subverted, in that they simultaneously retired from public performance, so they essentially became a faceless band.
 * Fagen and Becker being the Faces of the Band was not their intention to start with. The duo felt more at home as songwriters and instrumentalists. Fagen volunteered to be the band's lead singer for Can't Buy A Thrill, but was not prepared to combat his crippling stage fright to sing in front of an audience. This is how David Palmer became the band's "lead singer" (even though he only sings two and a half songs on Can't Buy A Thrill) and it was planned that he would draw attention away from Fagen and Becker and become the de facto Face of the Band. By 1973, Fagen and Becker had decided that performing live simply wasn't for them and decided to phase out the other members of the band, starting with Palmer (who sang the songs live in a completely different key than Fagen did on the album), who is almost completely absent from Countdown to Ecstasy (relegated to backing vocals and removed the from official band lineup listing in the liner notes, appearing instead in a list of backing vocalists) and gone completely by Pretzel Logic.
 * Genius Bonus: There's at least one website dedicated to explaining some of the obscure references in their songs.
 * Growing the Beard: Many fans agree, The Royal Scam was when they grew the beard. Pretzel Logic is also popular.
 * Last-Note Nightmare: "Josie"
 * Misattributed Song: No, they did not do "Still The One". That was Orleans.
 * The Hall of Fame writings from their website include a fictional letter in which a woman pleads for their induction so that she can meet them, and find out which one is her father. Her belief is based on a dream in which she is sitting in their lap, while they sing "Tequila Sunrise".
 * Needs More Love: "Everything Must Go".
 * Tear Jerker: A number of songs, including "Charlie Freak", "Doctor Wu", "Any World That I'm Welcome To", and "Third World Man".