“Bad Sneakers”—second song, side one of Katy Lied (1975)

This is a friendly sounding pop song, another one that could be a TV show theme, or an ad for the good life, as long as you don't pay too much attention to the lyrics. It's also another song that's a study in contrasts—between the music and the words, and also within the succinctly painted portrait that's got some very vivid references but is still pleasantly abstract. The geographical references are of both Los Angeles and New York. Whether the song is autobiographical or not shouldn't be important, but it's not outlandish to think it's referring to a person, or persons, very much like the songwriters, Steely Dan; the first line (“Five names that I can hardly stand to hear”) being very specific (while telling you nothing). Let's just say it's about a New York band who are out in Los Angeles, for their livelihood, recording. Looking to the future, there is either death or blandness (same thing)—that ditch they're digging, that fearsome excavation, in The Valley. I don't know if anyone ever referred to cocaine as freezing rain, but they used to call it snow. In 1975 it was the drug of choice, safer than milk. I personally was really into Piña Coladas around that time, even though they're way too sweet. This was before the Rupert Holmes song, “Escape” (around the end of that decade) drove a stake through that particular cocktail. If this song got dragged down through the subsequent decades, I feel like you can listen to it again with the right mindset. I never called athletic shoes “sneakers” but much of the population has no problem with the word. The word “bad,” in the early Seventies, meant good, hip, cool. That meaning hasn't really survived, for some reason. Whether “Bad Sneakers” refers positively to shoes a genuine hipster would wear, or pathetically to a loser desperately trying to emulate the good life—well, it could have meant both, and over time meant neither. Songs can age like fine wine or sad human beings, and it's either the best or the worst—and in this case I'm not going to say what I think, because I think maybe it doesn't matter.

—Randy Russell 2.3.19

Current Ranking: No. 28