1977 · Behind the Songs
A party for a girl the whole block has been waiting for.
Aja, released in 1977, is Steely Dan’s most polished album — and “Josie,” its third single, is the record’s most straightforward rocker. Issued in August 1978 with “Black Cow” on the B-side, it reached No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 20 in Canada. AllMusic’s Stewart Mason called it the album’s “most conventional rocker,” though, true to form, Becker and Fagen still laced it with jazz chords.
The song existed in an early version before the Aja sessions even began, and it carries one of Walter Becker’s rare guitar solos from the album — biographer Brian Sweet called it “a real stormer.” Drummer Jim Keltner earns his own footnote: his celebrated fill restarts the song after a brief pause, a small moment of theater in a track that otherwise glides. Billboard’s original review praised its rhythmic drive, “outstanding vocals” and “wry lyrics.”
The session crew reads like a hall of fame: Larry Carlton and Dean Parks on guitars, Chuck Rainey on bass, Victor Feldman on electric piano and Timothy B. Schmit singing backing vocals, all under producer Gary Katz. It is a reminder of how Steely Dan worked — Becker and Fagen writing the songs, then hiring the finest players in Los Angeles to realize them.
The lyric sketches a neighborhood celebration for the return of a fun-loving girl named Josie; Sweet has even suggested she might be coming home from prison. Whatever her story, the song throws her a party in three and a half minutes — a strutting groove and a chorus the whole block seems to sing. It is Steely Dan at their most welcoming, which is to say: still a little mysterious.