The Nightfly

Template:About Template:Good article {{safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst-infobox||$params=italic_title,name,type,longtype,artist,cover,border,alt,caption,released,recorded,venue,studio,genre,length,language,label,director,producer,compiler,chronology,prev_title,prev_year,year,next_title,next_year,misc|$extra=italic_title,longtype,border,caption,language,director,compiler,chronology,year,misc|$aliases=italic title>italic_title,Italic title>italic_title,Name>name,Type>type,image>cover,Cover>cover,Border>border,Alt>alt,Caption>caption,Longtype>longtype,Artist>artist,Released>released,Recorded>recorded,Venue>venue,Studio>studio,Genre>genre,Length>length,Language>language,Label>label,Director>director,Producer>producer,Compiler>compiler,Chronology>chronology,Misc>misc|$flags=override|$B={{#ifeq:{{#invoke:Is infobox in lead|main|[Ii]nfobox [Aa]lbum}}|true|{{#if:Template:Has short description | |Template:Short description|noreplace}}}}{{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template other Template:Category handler Template:Main other{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:Infobox album with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|ignoreblank=y|italic_title |type |name |image |cover |border |alt |caption |longtype |artist |released |recorded |venue |studio |genre |length |language |label |director |producer |compiler |prev_title|prev_year|next_title|next_year|chronology|year|misc}}{{#if:{{#invoke:String|match|error_category=Music infoboxes with Module:String errors|A|1=Kamakiriad1993AlbumThe NightflyDonald Fagen - The Nightfly.jpgDonald FagenOctober 1, 1982Template:Hlist* Soundworks Digital Audio/Video Recording Studios (New York)

Automated Sound (New York)
Village Recorders (Los Angeles)* Jazz pop
pop rock
R&B<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>38:46Warner Bros.Gary Katzx|2=</?t[drh][ >]|nomatch=}}|Template:Main other}}Template:Main other}}

The Nightfly is the debut solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Donald Fagen. Produced by Gary Katz, it was released October 1, 1982, by Warner Bros. Records. Fagen is best known for his work in the group Steely Dan, with whom he enjoyed a successful career since the 1970s. The band separated in 1981, leading Fagen to pursue a solo career. Although The Nightfly includes a number of production staff and musicians who had played on Steely Dan records, it was Fagen's first release without longtime collaborator Walter Becker.

Unlike most of Fagen's previous work, The Nightfly is highly autobiographical. Many of the songs relate to the cautiously optimistic mood of his suburban childhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s and incorporate such topics as late-night jazz disc jockeys, fallout shelters, and the Cuban Revolution. Recorded over eight months at various studios between New York City and Los Angeles, the album is an early example of a fully digital recording in popular music. The nascent technology, as well as the perfectionist nature of its engineers and musicians, made the album difficult to record.

The Nightfly was well-received, both critically and commercially. It was certified platinum in both the US and UK and generated two popular singles with the top 40 hit "I.G.Y." and the MTV favorite "New Frontier". Among critics, The Nightfly gained widespread acclaim and received seven nominations at the 1983 Grammy Awards. The relatively low-key but long-lived popularity of The Nightfly led Robert J. Toth of The Wall Street Journal in 2008 to dub the album "one of pop music's sneakiest masterpieces."<ref name="wsj">Template:Cite news</ref>

BackgroundEdit

Donald Fagen, born in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1948, grew up with an affinity for music. As a kid, he enjoyed listening to rock and roll pioneers Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, but personally felt that, as rock music gained popularity, it lost an edge. Fagen, a "lonely" child, then turned to late-night jazz radio shows for the vitality he felt the new music lacked.Template:Sfn As he got older, he intended to go to graduate school and pursue literature. Instead, he was "swept up" into the counterculture at Bard College,<ref name="nytimes">Template:Cite news</ref> where he met Walter Becker. They later moved to Los Angeles at the suggestion of their friend Gary Katz and took jobs as staff writers for ABC Records.<ref name="latimes1" /> Together, they formed Steely Dan, releasing their first album, Can't Buy a Thrill, in 1972. Over the course of the decade, the group became enormously successful on the strength of the albums Countdown to Ecstasy (1973), Pretzel Logic (1974), Katy Lied (1975), The Royal Scam (1976), and Aja (1977), the band's best-selling effort and a critical favorite. They gradually shifted from performing live to working solely in the studio, making the project a revolving selection of session musicians at the behest of Fagen and Becker.<ref name="AMG1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Their relationship became strained during the making of 1980's Gaucho, largely due to their insistence on perfection. Both Becker and Fagen would later recall they seemed depressed. In addition, Becker was in the midst of a drug problem and went through a withdrawal stage.<ref name="latimes1" /> Though Fagen imagined they might "stick it out for a while," he admitted to Robert Palmer of The New York Times, in an article published on June 17, 1981, that the group had indeed separated. "Basically, we decided after writing and playing together for 14 years, we could use a changement d'air as the French say," he told Palmer.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> After their split, Fagen worked on a song for the soundtrack of the film Heavy Metal, which got him back into the studio. He began working towards a solo album shortly thereafter. "Working on it has been interesting. The fact that it's not a Steely Dan album has freed me from a certain image, a preconceived idea of how it'll sound," he said at the time.Template:Sfn Fagen had hoped to record music on his own "a year or so" prior to the duo's breakup.<ref name="bb2" /> The album was originally slated to be titled Talk Radio.Template:Sfn

Recording and productionEdit

To prepare to use the digital technology, the album's engineers took classes at 3M in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The Nightfly was recorded in 1981–82 at Soundworks Digital Audio/Video Recording Studios and Automated Sound in New York City, and at Village Recorders in Los Angeles. The producer was Gary Katz, the album engineer was Roger Nichols and the mixer was Elliot Scheiner; all had worked on most of the seven previous Steely Dan albums. Many of the musicians had also played on Steely Dan records, including Jeff Porcaro, Rick Derringer and Larry Carlton. Similar to the Aja and Gaucho albums, a large number of studio musicians were employed, with the liner notes crediting a total 31 musicians.<ref name="linernotes" />

During a radio interview on Off the Record in 1983, Fagen revealed that, though he had considered songwriting one of his strengths, and that initially the album's songs came to him easily, he began to struggle without his long-term co-writer Walter Becker.Template:Sfn This writing difficulty turned into a lengthy writer's block after the album was finished.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> His demos for the album were mostly composed on keyboards and a drum machine and remained without lyrics, to allow for alteration when in the studio.Template:Sfn

The Nightfly is one of the earliest examples of fully digital recording in popular music. Katz and Fagen had previously experimented with digital recording for Gaucho, which ended up entirely analog.<ref name="bb2" /> Nichols conducted experiments and found that the digital recordings sounded better than those recorded to magnetic tape.Template:Sfn The Nightfly was recorded using 3M's 32-track and four-track recorders.<ref name="bb2">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Nichols built a new drum machine, the Wendel II—a sequel to the original Wendel, which was employed for their work on Gaucho.Template:Sfn The new model was upgraded from 8 bits to 16 bits and "plugged straight into the 3M digital machines, so there was no degradation" in sound.Template:Sfn

Problems with the technology persisted in the beginning, particularly regarding the alignment of the 3M machines. Representatives from 3M had to be called to align the machines, but eventually Fagen and Nichols grew tired of this. Nichols and engineers Jerry Garsszva and Wayne Yurgelun took classes at 3M's Minnesota headquarters and returned knowing how to align the machines themselves.Template:Sfn "I was ready to transfer to analog and give it up on several occasions, but my engineering staff kept talking me into it", Fagen remembered.<ref name="bb2" /> They practiced an early form of "comping" Fagen's vocals—which they called "beat[ing] the computer"—wherein he would record multiple takes and the engineers would pick the best lines from each take.Template:Sfn On "Walk Between Raindrops", they combined bass parts playing on a keyboard bass and bass guitar. Doubling bass lines would "become common practice on many records", according to writer James Sweet.Template:Sfn

Fagen opted to overdub each part separately for The Nightfly. It became enormously difficult, between this approach and the new technology, to record the album. Pianist Michael Omartian "objected strongly" when Fagen tasked him to "set the groove" of the title track on his own, with nothing but a click track. On another occasion, Fagen "demanded subtle timing differences between the left and right-hand piano parts" on "Ruby Baby". The effect he desired was achieved with Omartian and Greg Phillinganes playing together on the same keyboard.<ref name="mojo" /> For the "party noises" in "Ruby Baby", the team suspended a microphone from the ceiling of Studio 54 – just next door to the studio they were working in – and recorded one of Jerry Rubin's "business parties". Unsatisfied with the results, the group instead held a party in the studio by themselves and included that ambience in the song.Template:Sfn

Larry Carlton performs lead guitar on much of the album and recorded his pieces in four days. During his time with the group, he discovered a humming sound coming from his amplifier. The engineers discovered the source on the outside of the building: a large magnet "that formed part of the New York subway system".Template:Sfn In one instance, a strange smell permeated the studio space at Soundworks. The studio staff "gutted" the studio, removing its air conditioning, carpeting, and recording console until they discovered the cause of the smell: a deceased rat in a drainpipe.Template:Sfn Sessions regularly stretched long into the evening; Fagen would often refer to this as "being on the night train".Template:Sfn The album took eight months to record and was mixed in 10 days.Template:Sfn

CompositionEdit

Template:Quote box The Nightfly is considered more jazzy than Fagen's previous work with Steely Dan, and his lyrics are more wistful and nostalgic than biting.<ref name="nytimes" /> Fagen aimed for his lyrics to have "as little irony as possible", and his goal was to make an album that was fun to listen to.<ref name="nytimes" /> As many of the songs come from an adolescent viewpoint, he hoped for them to maintain "a certain innocence".Template:Sfn Walter Becker was responsible for the more sardonic elements in Steely Dan, and many writers have considered his absence the reason for the album's "warm and nostalgic" tone.<ref name="nytimes" /><ref name="latimes" /> Another difference between The Nightfly and his work with Becker is that it maintains a focus on a "certain period [or] motif", according to Fagen.<ref name="bb2" /> Though Fagen hints in the album's liner notes that it is an autobiographical piece, he downplayed this notion in a later interview: "It is not me exactly. It is a composite character of myself, what I remember and people I knew. Plus, it includes my feelings in retrospect."Template:Sfn

According to Sam Sutherland, writing for Billboard, Fagen's songs "shimmer with jazz harmonies and alternately swing, shuffle or bounce to a samba".<ref name="bb2" /> Will Fulford-Jones, in his appraisal of the album in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, considered it ironic in the sense that while it focuses on a simpler time, its production sounded like a modern Steely Dan album.<ref name="1001a">Template:Cite book</ref> Fagen held a "propensity for the perfect drum track", and multiple drummers are credited on the album, sometimes on the same song. For example, on "I.G.Y.", James Gadson played the snare drum, kick drum, and hi-hat, and Jeff Porcaro performed the tom-tom fills. Even still, some songs contain the drum machine Wendel II.Template:Sfn Fagen feared listeners finding plagiarism in his lyrics, so he altered a lyric in "The Goodbye Look"—"Behind the big casinos by the beach"—as it "reminded him of a line from a well-known poem". He was also concerned the "late line" lyrics in the title song were too close to the late-night news program Nightline.Template:Sfn

SongsEdit

{{#invoke:Listen|main}} The album opens with "I.G.Y.", the title of which refers to the "International Geophysical Year", an event that ran from July 1957 to December 1958.<ref name="Whitburn">Template:Cite book</ref> The I.G.Y. was an international scientific project promoting collaboration among the world's scientists. Fagen's lyrics reference, from the point of view of that time, an optimistic vision of futuristic concepts such as solar-powered cities, a transatlantic tunnel, permanent space stations,<ref name="allmusicIGY">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and spandex jackets. Fagen remembered being enchanted by the prospects of a "gleaming future" and hoped to give an optimistic look back at it.Template:Sfn The title of "Green Flower Street" is a "nod to the jazz standard "On Green Dolphin Street."Template:Sfn "Ruby Baby" is modeled after the Drifters' version of the song.<ref name="bb2" /> For his rewrite of "Ruby Baby", he listened to several records from the 1950s to "get a general atmosphere of the period."Template:Sfn "Maxine" references the harmonies of the Four Freshmen,<ref name="bb2" /> and revolves around an "extremely idealized version of high-school romance." The music was created from an Ed Greene drum track rescued from another song, where it wasn't working.Template:Sfn

"New Frontier" follows a "gawky teenager" inviting a girl back to his family's backyard fallout shelter for a private gathering.<ref name="nytimes" /><ref name="am">Template:Cite news</ref> "The Nightfly", the title song, was once described by American novelist Arthur Phillips as a "portrait of a late-night D.J. in Baton Rouge, taking lunatic phone calls from listeners while silently battling his own loneliness and regret."<ref name="nytimes2">Template:Cite news</ref> According to Fagen, the song "uses a lot of images from the blues: that hair formula gets its name from Charley Patton, the old delta blues guitarist, and Mount Belzoni gets its name from another old blues lyric: 'When the trial's in Belzoni/No need to scream and cry.'"Template:Sfn "The Goodbye Look" alludes to the popularity of bossa nova in the 1960s.<ref name="bb2" /> The song is a "tale of military upheaval on a Caribbean island."Template:Sfn The last song, "Walk Between Raindrops", has origins in a Jewish folk tale. It was the last song to be recorded, and took form "almost as an afterthought," according to writer Sweet.Template:Sfn

ArtworkEdit

File:The Nightfly back cover.jpg

The back cover of the album depicts a house with a solitary window lit. Commentators took this as a memory of Fagen's youth.

The album's cover artwork features a photo of Donald Fagen as a disc jockey, wearing a collared shirt and tie, speaking into a RCA 77DX microphone. In front of him is a turntable (16 inch '50s model, with a Para-Flux A-16 tonearm), an ashtray, a matchbook, and a pack of Chesterfield King cigarettes. Visible on the table with the record player is the cover of the 1958 jazz album Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders (one of Fagen's favorite albums).Template:Sfn On the wall behind is a large clock, indicating that the time is 4:09. An advertisement in Billboard shortly before the album's release described the album cover: "At 4:09 a.m., silence and darkness have taken hold of the city. The only sound is the voice of The Nightfly".<ref name="bb">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Fagen appeared on the album cover despite his reclusive nature. "It was an autobiographical album so it seemed like I might as well go public with it," he said.Template:Sfn The cover was shot in Fagen's apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan by photographer James Hamilton. Two shoots were arranged because in the first, the RCA microphone was facing the wrong direction.Template:Sfn Gale Sasson and Vern Yenor are credited with the cover's set design.<ref name="linernotes" />

In his memoir, Eminent Hipsters, Fagen notes that the cover figure "wasn't supposed to be a stand-in for any particular jazz DJ," but noted a few personalities from the period that factored into the creation: Ed Beach, Dan Morgenstern, Martin Williams, R.D. Harlan, "Symphony Sid" Torin, and what Fagen regarded as his "main man", WEVD's Mort Fega. "He was laid-back, knowledgeable, and forthright, the cool uncle you wished you'd had."Template:Sfn At the time of the album's release, he remembered that jazz music offered him an escape from the adults in his life: "When I saw 'E.T.,' I realized that the E.T. in my bedroom was my Thelonious Monk records. Everything that he represented was totally unworldly in a way, although at the same time, jazz to me seemed more real than the environment in which I was living."<ref name="nytimes"/><ref name="bb2" /> The Wall Street JournalTemplate:'s Robert J. Toth writes, "The cover adds another layer of autobiography. On the front, we see Mr. Fagen as a crew-cut deejay on the graveyard shift. On the back is his audience, a single lighted window in a row of tract homes — or maybe the artist as a young man, drinking in inspiration."<ref name="wsj" /> Robert Palmer, of The New York Times, continued in this line of thinking: "Inside, there's a teenager with his ear next to a portable radio. He's playing it softly, so his parents won't wake up, and he can barely make out the sounds through the static. [...] The teenager was Donald Fagen."<ref name="nytimes" />

ReleaseEdit

The Nightfly was released on October 1, 1982, on vinyl and cassette.<ref name="bb5">Template:Cite magazine</ref> It was also released in its first prerecorded digital form, via half-inch Beta and VHS format cassettes issued by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab.<ref name="bb2" /> In addition, a matching folio for the album was released by Cherry Lane Music in February 1983.<ref name="bb3">Template:Cite magazine</ref> It was first widely available on compact disc in 1984; a reader's poll conducted by Digital Audio magazine the following year ranked it among the best releases of the time, alongside Security (1982) by Peter Gabriel (another fully digital recording) and Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. (1984).<ref name="bb4">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Early CD copies, however, suffered from being manufactured from third and fourth generation masters. Nichols discovered this when he received a call from Stevie Wonder, who told him that his CD copy of The Nightfly sounded "funny."Template:Sfn Nichols penned an essay in Recording Engineer and Producer, criticizing record companies' apparent carelessness in manufacturing the then-nascent format.Template:Sfn The Nightfly was reissued on various disc formats four times in recent years, each time with a multichannel mix: on DVD-Audio in 2002, on DualDisc in 2004, on MVI in 2007 and on hybrid multichannel SACD in The Warner Premium Sound series by Warner Japan in 2011.<ref name="DVDA">DVD-A.net: "Donald Fagen – The Nightfly re-releases"</ref><ref>PS3SACD.com: "More Warner albums coming to SACD 5.1"</ref>

Following completion of the album, Fagen entered therapy and more-or-less dropped out of public sight. In his memoir, Eminent Hipsters, he writes that "the panic attacks I used to get as a kid returned, only now accompanied by morbid thoughts and paranoia, big-time." He remained paralyzed for much of the rest of the 1980s, "gobbling antidepressants" and nearly unable to get through each day.Template:Sfn He came to view The Nightfly as the culmination of "whatever kind of energy was behind the writing I had been doing in the '70s."<ref name="latimes1">Template:Cite news</ref> He turned down requests for television performances, opting only for radio and press interviews.Template:Sfn Though he suggested he may do smaller concerts in New York, Fagen did not tour behind The Nightfly.Template:Sfn He expounded upon his mental state after the album's completion: Template:Cquote In 2006, Fagen maintained that "I haven't listened to The Nightfly since I made it."<ref name="sos06">Template:Cite news</ref>

Since resuming as a touring band in 1993, Steely Dan has performed several songs from The Nightfly on occasion; Fagen also did as a solo artist during a 2006 tour in support of his third solo album, Morph the Cat. Steely Dan — now with Fagen as the sole original member following Walter Becker's death in 2017 — performed The Nightfly in its entirety at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, and Orpheum Theater in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2019. An official live recording compiled from these performances, "Donald Fagen's The Nightfly Live", was released in 2021.

Critical receptionEdit

Template:Album reviews The Nightfly was met with near universal acclaim. Billboard labeled it their top album pick in the first month of its release, calling it a "stunning debut" and praising its "typically blue chip crew of crack players and crisp digital production."<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> David Fricke wrote in Rolling Stone that "Donald Fagen conjures a world where all things are possible, even to a kid locked in his bedroom."<ref name="RS" /> Robert Christgau, writing for The Village Voice, gave the album an A and commented, "these songs are among Fagen's finest [...] his acutely shaded lyrics put the jazziest music he's ever committed to vinyl into a context that like everything here is loving but very clear-eyed."<ref name="Christgau" /> Robert Palmer of The New York Times called it a "vivid and frequently ingenious look back at a world that is gone forever. Its sound is glossy and contemporary, but references to both the spirit and the music of the years when Mr. Fagen was growing up can be found in almost every song."<ref name="nytimes" /> Charles Shaar Murray of NME called The Nightfly "an album which doesn't so much dilute the arctic smartassery of the Dan as warm it up, loosen it up, and present it in a new context."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> But in The Boston Phoenix, Howard Hampton tempered his praise. While he loved the song "I.G.Y." ("an infectious ode"), he felt that "The rest of The Nightfly, though exceptional in places, just hasn't that transcendental kick of this song."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The sole poor review came from Paul Strange at Melody Maker, who dubbed the album a "bummer. What made the Dan an important band of the early '70s has been replaced by ultra-slick, uninspired background mush."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Subsequent reviews have remained positive. Jon Matsumoto picked it for a "Classic of the Week" editorial in the Los Angeles Times in 1994, calling it an "elegant pop album," praising the album's "vivid lyrical tapestry" and "rhythmically effervescent" music.<ref name="latimes">Template:Cite news</ref> Jason Ankeny of AllMusic regarded The Nightfly as a continuation of "the smooth pop-jazz mode favored on the final Steely Dan records", as well as "lush and shimmering, produced with cinematic flair by Gary Katz; romanticized but never sentimental... crafted with impeccable style and sophistication."<ref name="AMG" /> Bud Scoppa, in a review of the Nightfly trilogy (a reissue of Fagen's first three studio albums), wrote that they are "united not just by their sophistication but also by a sense of nostalgia for what has been irretrievably lost."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The Nightfly is described as a "superb jazz-pop solo album" in Pete Prown and HP Newquist's 1997 book Legends of Rock Guitar.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Jazz historian Ted Gioia cites it as an example of Steely Dan "proving that pop-rock could equally benefit from a healthy dose of jazz" during their original tenure, which coincided with a period when rock musicians frequently experimented with jazz idioms and techniques.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

AccoladesEdit

The Nightfly was nominated for seven awards at the 25th Annual Grammy Awards in 1983, including Album of the Year and Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical. "I.G.Y." received the most nominations, included on lists for Song of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, and Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s), while "Ruby Baby" received a nod for Best Vocal Arrangement. In addition, Gary Katz was nominated for Producer of the Year.<ref name="bb1">Template:Cite magazine</ref> In 2000, it was voted number 288 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums,<ref name="Larkin">Template:Cite book</ref> and in 2006, it was included in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.<ref name="1001a" /> In 2010, Vatican City's L'Osservatore Romano selected The Nightfly as one of its official Top 10 Albums.<ref name="vatican">Template:Cite news</ref>

Commercial performanceEdit

The Nightfly debuted on BillboardTemplate:'s Rock Albums chart at number 39 during the week ending October 23, 1982,<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> peaking at number 25 on November 13.<ref name="bbra">Template:Cite magazine</ref> It debuted on the magazine's all-genre Top LPs and Tape chart on October 30 at number 45;<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> it climbed to number 11, its peak, on November 27.<ref name="peaktopLPs">Template:Cite magazine</ref> It also charted on BillboardTemplate:'s Black LPs chart, peaking at number 24.<ref name="peakblack">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Internationally, the album charted higher: in Norway, it reached number seven on the charts.<ref name="norway" /> In Sweden and New Zealand, the album peaked at numbers eight and nine, respectively.<ref name="sweden" /><ref name="nz" /> The Nightfly performed more poorly than Gaucho commercially; Fagen felt as though the label did not market the album properly or effectively.Template:Sfn WBCN in Boston, inspired by the album cover, developed a promotion in which listeners could register to host their own radio show.<ref name="rr">Template:Cite journal</ref>

LegacyEdit

The album remains a favorite among audiophiles.<ref name="1001a" /> According to Paul Tingen of Sound on Sound, The Nightfly was "for years a popular demonstration record in hi-fi stores across the globe".<ref name="sos06"/> Paul White, editor-in-chief of Sound on Sound, said The Nightfly "is always a good reference for checking out monitoring systems and shows what good results could be obtained from those early digital recording systems in the right hands".<ref name="sos061">Template:Cite news</ref> In addition to its use in recording studio tests, Clive Young of Pro Sound News called Fagen's "I.G.Y." the "Free Bird" of pro audio, claiming that almost every live sound engineer uses the song to test the front-of-house system's sound response.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> EQ Magazine rated The Nightfly as among the Top 10 Best Recorded Albums of All Time, alongside the Beatles's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.<ref name="monkey">Bad Monkey X article: "Donald Fagen: The Nightfly."</ref>

Track listingEdit

Template:Track listing Template:Track listing

PersonnelEdit

Adapted from the album's liner notes.<ref name="linernotes" />

Template:Col-begin Template:Col-2 Side one

"I.G.Y."
- Donald Fagen – lead vocals, synthesizer, synth blues harp
- Zachary Sanders, Valerie Simpson, Frank Floyd, Gordon Grody – background vocals
- James Gadson – drums
- Jeff Porcaro – additional drums
- Starz Vanderlocket – percussion
- Anthony Jackson – bass guitar
- Greg Phillinganes – electric piano
- Rob Mounsey – synthesizers
- Rick Derringer, Hugh McCracken – guitar
- Ronnie Cuber – baritone saxophone
- Michael Brecker – tenor saxophone
- David Tofani – alto saxophone
- Dave Bargeron – trombone
- Randy Brecker – trumpet
"Green Flower Street"
- Donald Fagen – lead vocals, synthesizer
- Frank Floyd, Daniel Lazerus, Zachary Sanders, Valerie Simpson – background vocals
- Jeff Porcaro – drums
- Starz Vanderlocket – percussion
- Chuck Rainey – bass guitar
- Greg Phillinganes – electric piano, clavinet
- Rob Mounsey – synthesizer
- Dean Parks – guitar
- Larry Carlton – lead guitar
"Ruby Baby"
- Donald Fagen – lead vocals, organ, synthesizer, electric piano, background vocals
- Valerie Simpson – background vocals
- Jeff Porcaro – drums
- James Gadson – additional drums
- Anthony Jackson – bass guitar
- Michael Omartian – acoustic piano
- Greg Phillinganes – acoustic piano solo
- Rick Derringer, Hugh McCracken – guitar
- Larry Carlton – lead guitar
- Michael Brecker – tenor saxophone
- Randy Brecker – trumpet, flugelhorn
"Maxine"
- Donald Fagen – lead vocals, organ, electric piano, background vocals
- Ed Greene – drums
- Marcus Miller – bass guitar
- Greg Phillinganes – acoustic piano
- Larry Carlton – guitar
- Ronnie Cuber – baritone saxophone
- Michael Brecker – tenor saxophone
- David Tofani – alto saxophone
- Dave Bargeron – euphonium
- Randy Brecker – flugelhorn

Template:Col-2 Side two

"New Frontier"
- Donald Fagen – lead vocals, synthesizer, background vocals
- Starz Vanderlocket – background vocals, percussion
- Ed Greene – drums
- Abraham Laboriel – bass
- Michael Omartian – acoustic piano, electric piano
- Larry Carlton – lead guitar
- Hugh McCracken – harmonica
"The Nightfly"
- Donald Fagen – lead vocals, synthesizer, piano, background vocals
- Frank Floyd, Zachary Sanders, Valerie Simpson – background vocals
- Jeff Porcaro – drums
- Marcus Miller – bass guitar
- Michael Omartian – electric piano
- Rob Mounsey – synthesizer
- Rick Derringer, Hugh McCracken – guitar
- Larry Carlton – lead guitar
"The Goodbye Look"
- Donald Fagen – lead vocals, organ, synthesizers, background vocals
- Valerie Simpson – background vocals
- Jeff Porcaro – drums
- Starz Vanderlocket – percussion
- Marcus Miller – bass
- Greg Phillinganes – synthesizer, electric piano
- Dean Parks – guitar
- Steve Khan – acoustic guitar
- Larry Carlton – lead guitar
"Walk Between Raindrops"
- Donald Fagen – lead vocals, organ, synthesizer, electric piano, background vocals
- Lesley Miller – background vocals
- Steve Jordan – drums
- Will Lee – bass guitar
- Greg Phillinganes – synthesizer bass
- Larry Carlton – guitar