Kings By Steely Dan Analysis

“Kings” by Steely Dan is a piece that comes from their debut album titled “Can’t Buy A Thrill” which was released in 1972 and has gone gold by the 7th month of its release. “Kings” falls into the genre of soft, pop rock which is relevant when going into analysing this song musically. So at first glance, the general ideas you can gather is that this piece is played at a familiar 4/4 meter, and is played at the key of A minor which is a very safe key for a pop-centered song since there are no sharp or flat notes. One thing to note is that the sheet music doesn’t provide dynamics for the song which is weird but somewhat common with pop music. The song’s tempo consists of a 150 bpm which the sheet music says you play “moderately fast,” which is standard for an upbeat pop song.

in the first measure until the double barline 4 measures afterwards where the rest of the instruments come in, the piano plays an A minor chord with the rhythm of an eighth note to 2 dotted quarter notes in the treble clef and the bass clef continues the rhythm by having a quarter note, two eighth notes which the last one gets tied into a quarter note and ends on another quarter note. This A minor chord is the rhythmic idea or motif that is carried out through the entire song and even is the last chord played. And of course, the chords played don’t all just fall under the A minor key, since in the beginning of the song, after the piano solo ends, the whole band enters with a D major chord which would now be a “IV” instead of a “iv” which is common ground for a minor key, following with a F major chord and back to the A minor chord. This is interesting since this is also part of the motif since the D and F major chords are seen throughout the song