"Can't Buy a Thrill" is the debut studio album by American rock band Steely Dan, released in November 1972 by ABC Records. Written by band members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, the album was recorded in August 1972 at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles with producer Gary Katz. It is one of Steely Dan's most stylistically eclectic albums, blending elements of soft rock, folk rock, jazz rock, and pop, with philosophical and elliptical lyrics.
The album was a commercial success, reaching number 17 on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart. It was bolstered by the popular singles "Do It Again" and "Reelin' In the Years" and was eventually certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It also received positive reviews and has appeared on several retrospective "greatest albums" lists, including Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" (2003).
Can't Buy a Thrill was recorded in August 1972 at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles. During the recording sessions, two songs were left off the album and released as a single: "Dallas" and "Sail the Waterway." This is the only Steely Dan album to feature David Palmer as a lead vocalist, as Donald Fagen was initially concerned about singing live. Drummer Jim Hodder also contributed lead vocals on one track, "Midnite Cruiser" (sometimes spelled "Midnight Cruiser"). By the time recording for the next album began, Fagen had taken over the role of lead vocalist entirely.
The album's musical style features an upbeat soft rock tone with a variety of influences. Music journalist Paul Lester described it as incorporating mambo, swing, jazz, and Latin elements. Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted that while the album contains fewer jazz flourishes than Steely Dan's later works, tracks like "Do It Again" incorporate a Latin jazz beat, and "Reelin' In the Years" features jazzy guitar solos and harmonies. Robert Christgau described "Do It Again" as a toned-down mambo with tragic lyrics about a compulsive loser.
One of the tracks, "Fire in the Hole," features strident piano by Fagen and alludes to the Vietnam War, specifically the phrase "fire in the hole" used by American soldiers, while also referencing the draft evasion of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a sentiment shared by Becker and Fagen themselves.
The title of the album is a reference to the opening line of the Bob Dylan song "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry." The album cover, designed by Robert Lockart, features a photomontage of muscle men and a line of prostitutes standing in Rue du Gros-Horloge in Rouen, France, which is thematically tied to the album title. In the liner notes to a reissue of The Royal Scam (1976), Becker and Fagen humorously described the cover of Can't Buy a Thrill as "the most hideous album cover of the seventies." The cover was banned in Francisco Franco's Spain and replaced with a photo of the band performing live in concert.
Can't Buy a Thrill was released in the United States by ABC Records in November 1972, and in the United Kingdom by Probe Records in January 1973. It was available in both a two-channel stereo mix and a four-channel quadraphonic mix. The album peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart and was reissued in the U.S. on August 22, 1973, by Dunhill Records. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA on May 31, 1973, for the shipment of 500,000 copies in the U.S., and it achieved Platinum status on September 7, 1993, for the shipment of 1,000,000 copies.
