At the 2024 Republican National Convention, the cover band Sixwire set up shop covering rock classics, like Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years.” Now, Steely Dan themselves have responded to the performance, suggesting the band play Donald Fagen’s anti-Trump song, “Tin Foil Hat,” instead.
The response came in the form of a Comic Sans text image posted on Facebook, almost like the Steely Dan equivalent of a shitpost. It reads, “Hey! Sixwire: If you want to play our music, how about playing The Man in the Tin Foil Hat?”
The song in reference is actually not a Steely Dan song, but a Todd Rundgren song featuring Fagen, released on Rundgren’s 2017 album White Knight. With mentions of “coming down the escalator,” draining the swamp, alternative facts, tiny hands, and more, the lyrics are a circa-2017 condemnation of Trump, describing his taking office as feeling “like a coup d’état.” Listen to the song below.
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The jab is the latest event in a long history of musicians rebuking their use of their music by politicians, and isn’t the first time Steely Dan has voiced a distaste for right-wing politics. In 2016, Fagen told Rolling Stone, “All those right-wingers suffer from an enlargement of the amygdala in the lower brain. It makes them paranoid and aggressive.”
Steely Dan most recently opened some dates for The Eagles earlier this year after the recovery of Fagen, who briefly hospitalized in 2023 due to an illness. This past May, a cover of their song “Dirty Work” by King Princess was included in the third season of Hacks.
