Album Can't Buy a Thrill (Steely Dan). Songs and videos online

Can't Buy a Thrill is the first album by Steely Dan, released in 1972. It peaked at #17 on the Billboard chart and has been certified gold (1973) and platinum (1993) in the U.S. In 2003, the album was ranked number 238 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The album was originally released in two-channel stereo and also in a special four-channel quadrophonic mix. There are some significant musical differences between the two mixes, such as extra lead guitar fills in the quad mix of "Reelin' in the Years".

The album cover features a line of prostitutes standing in a red light area waiting for clients, an image which was chosen because of its relevance to the album title. The cover was banned in Francisco Franco's Spain and was replaced with a photograph of the band playing in concert. The title is taken from a lyric in the Bob Dylan song "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" on Highway 61 Revisited. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen themselves commented on the album art in their liner notes to the reissued The Royal Scam, saying that album possessed "the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none (excepting perhaps Can't Buy a Thrill)."

Two songs recorded during the Can't Buy a Thrill sessions were left off the album and released as a single ("Dallas" and "Sail the Waterway"). This is the only Steely Dan album to include David Palmer as a lead vocalist, having been recruited after Donald Fagen expressed concerns over singing live. Drummer Jim Hodder also chips in lead vocals on one song, as well as singing the "Dallas" single. By the time recording of the next album began, the band and producer Gary Katz had convinced Fagen to assume the full lead vocalist role.