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    • The meaning of the song “Brooklyn” by Steely Dan
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    The meaning of the song “Brooklyn” by Steely Dan

    Pabio Posted on

    Steely Dan-Walter Becker-Donald Fagen

    (Credits: Far Out / Spotify)

    Let’s be realistic. Having a song written about you is a dubious honor. Sure, maybe you’ll receive a beautiful love song written about you or a tribute to your close friendship. It can happen. In reality, though, if you’ve written a song about yourself, it’s probably not something you’d want to play to anyone, especially if the artist who wrote it was Steely Dan.

    To be clear, to be immortalized by a band of his caliber is absolutely an honor. You can be sure that the song will be a real hit. However, it will almost certainly be a withering and bitterly funny description of all your worst qualities as a person. There’s Dr. Wu, the shady therapist who preys on his patients in the song of the same name. Or Kid Charlemagne, a drug dealer whose product is so pure that it leads to his death.

    Then there’s the anonymous subject of one of their best early hits, “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under me).” The song, track eight from their debut album I can’t buy a thrillis one of the most beloved in the band’s catalog, but for years people just couldn’t understand what exactly David Palmer was talking about. That all changed a few years ago, and we owe that to Aimee Mann.

    You see, Mann is a die-hard fan of The Dan. So imagine how thrilled she must have been to learn that she was going to be opening for them on tour in 2022. Then imagine how upset she must have been to learn that, as soon as she had been added to the shows, she had been removed from them. She drew a comic strip about it which she posted on Instagram, speculating that “it seems like they thought their audience wouldn’t like a female singer-songwriter?”

    Donald Fagan released a statement to Pitchfork saying he was “misinformed as to the firmness of the commitment to a particular opening act…I thought it might not be the best matchup in terms of style musical”. Mann took it with typical good grace, joking on Twitter that she’d forgive them if they just told her what “Brooklyn” was about. Fagan took this to heart and emailed a detailed explanation to Mann in due course.

    Mann was amazed and after getting Fagan’s blessing to share this information, he began covering the song on tour and letting everyone be inspired by it. Telling Uncut magazine that the song was about when Fagan and Walter Becker lived in Brooklyn, they had this “downstairs neighbor; this loud, entitled guy. From a cynical point of view, they listed all these awards that they thought this guy thought he was entitled to; what would it take to make this asshole happy?

    Fagan also confirmed this in an interview for Zoo World magazine in 1974, which I think we can forgive Mann for missing, since she was 14 at the time. Something to keep in mind, then. The next time you feel like worrying about what you’re owed, there might be a musical genius keeping an eye on you, just waiting to turn your cynicism and entitlement into jazz-pop gold. And there is no royalty for this.

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