Aja (album)

Aja
Studio album by
ReleasedSeptember 23, 1977
RecordedLate 1976–July 1977
Studio
Genre
Length39:56
LabelABC
ProducerGary Katz
Steely Dan chronology
The Royal Scam
(1976)
Aja
(1977)
Gaucho
(1980)
Singles from Aja
  1. "Peg"
    Released: November 1977
  2. "Deacon Blues"
    Released: March 1978
  3. "Josie"
    Released: August 1978

Aja (/ˈʒə/, pronounced "Asia") is the sixth studio album by the American rock band Steely Dan, released on September 23, 1977, by ABC Records. For the album, band leaders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker pushed Steely Dan further into experimenting with different combinations of session players, enlisting the services of nearly 40 musicians, while pursuing longer, more sophisticated compositions and arrangements.

The album peaked at number three on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart, and number five on the UK Albums Chart, ultimately becoming Steely Dan's most commercially successful release. It spawned the hit singles "Peg", "Deacon Blues", and "Josie". At the 20th Annual Grammy Awards, Aja won Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical, and was nominated for Album of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. It has appeared on many retrospective "greatest albums" lists, with critics and audiophiles applauding the album's high production quality. In 2010, the album was added to the National Recording Registry by Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".