The Pop Corporation

It’s 2001 and the USA, UK and pals are carpet bombing the Middle East. January, George Dubya Bush is sworn in thanks to some hanging chads, Apple launches iTunes and, later that year, 9/11 would change everything forever.

While US democracy looked shaky, while war saw people taking to the streets in protest, people set fire to themselves in Tianamenn Square, foot and mouth breaks out in the UK, and once again, we’re all wondering what the fuck is going on.

The music industry was having a crisis of it’s own, because 2001 was peer-to-peer sharing was getting music exec’s knickers in a bunch, and Napster found themselves in high profile court cases. Music was obsessing about what it’s future would look like, and the horror of download only releases was rocking the business to it’s core, before they released it would cut out half their costs and they could charge the same for an album release, and rinse customers further, but not before they buried the folks at Napster and the like.

Still, at least fans and the industry had the Grammy Awards to look forward to, and we get some stellar live music from Madonna, Destiny’s Child and… erm… Moby feat. the Blue Man Group and Jill Scott, ushered onto stage by John Stewart who surely must’ve thought he’d been spiked.

To get a handle on what was going down in 2001, Eminem’s ‘Stan’ had taken over the world, Neo Soul was shaking up R&B with D’Angelo about to win R&B LP of the year, and the world was watching Ally McBeal and listening to ‘I Try’ by Macy Gray, absolutely convinced they’d found her all by themselves, in one of the most subtle marketing campaigns ever undertaken in pop.

Of course, it was a period of boybands and pop, and *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys were clean-cut, All-American Boys serving up jawlines to distract the population from the constant thread of terrorism and dusty footage of helicopters firing rockets at Muslims.

Tucked away in the show, was the very specific gong of Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. Do they have a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group without Vocals? We don’t care to check, but we’re looking at a fertile period of pop music in the early Noughties. The aforementioned boybands, Destiny’s Child, K-Ci & JoJo, S Club, the all-star Lady Marmalade cut, and of course, the children’s favourite pop group, Steely Dan.

In the award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, the Backstreet Boys were up with maybe their weirdest hit – ‘Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely’, which is a song that never quite drops, has some Spanish guitar thanks to the relatively recent release of Santana’s ‘Supernatural’ LP and it’s mega hit ‘Smooth’, and cashed in on the troubles of the individual members of the group, like nodding to Brian Backstreet’s open heart surgery in the video.

“Life goes on as it never ends
Eyes of stone observe the trends“

Deep. Very so very deep. Backstreet must have fancied their chances, looking at The Corrs ‘Breathless’ and *NSYNC’s ‘Bye Bye Bye’ as the main threat to any chance of a speech on stage. You wouldn’t have thought ‘Pinch Me’ by Barenaked Ladies would be much of a threat, let alone those two cynical guys who won’t talk to anyone from Steely Dan with… checks notes… ‘Cousin Dupree’ from their ‘Two Against Nature’ LP.

As if.

Of course, Steely Dan end up landing the prize for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals (a day they must have always dreamed of), as well as grabbing Album of the Year, which is different from Record of the Year, for some reason. Fagen and Becker also picked up Best Pop Vocal Album, beating Madonna’s ‘Music’, Britney’s ‘Oops! I Did It Again’, and *NSYNC’s ‘No Strings Attached’.

In Steely Dan circles though, it’ll always be the evening when Walter Becker walked onto a stage in front of a packed out audience, beamed to millions of TVs, and outstretched his hand to the blind Stevie Wonder expecting him to reciprocate.

For two old geezers to land these awards is amusing enough, but to do it with a song that is about a guy who wants to shag his cousin is even funnier. The song’s notoriety would continue on the release of Owen Wilson’s movie ‘You, Me and Dupree’ who Steely Dan sarcastically said was lifted from their song, to which Owen Wilson replied in the same deadpan fashion:

“I have never heard the song ‘Cousin Dupree’ and I don’t even know who this gentleman, Mr. Steely Dan, is. I hope this helps to clear things up and I can get back to concentrating on my new movie, ‘HEY 19’.“

Like the scene from the ’60s ‘Bedazzled’ movie, the young pop fans found themselves in Dudley Moore’s character crooning ‘LOVE ME! LOVE ME!‘ and Fagen and Becker’s LP filled with sleazy tales about dirty old buggers wanting sexual excitement and cruelty, very much Peter Cook’s satan, coolly stating “you fill me with inertia”. Malevolent gloss bops, for sure.

Steely Dan’s victory was – and still is – one of the biggest shocks the Grammy’s have seen, and to many, it was ‘the revenge of the boomers’, and almost overnight, young people decided they hated these slick, smug old bastards and that wouldn’t let up until their recent renaissance, who actively enjoy Steely Dan exactly for being slick, smug old bastards. As Radiohead and Beck went home empty handed, many of Gen X swore they’d never let anyone forget this. For real though, imagine the Radiohead fans crying about the hugely derivative ‘Kid A’ losing out to ‘Two Against Natures’.

Of course, you won’t be surprised to learn that Beck is a Steely Dan head, and when Walter Becker died, he played a version of ‘Josie’ with his band, calling Becker a “rock ‘n’ roll hero”.

However, what music fans were expecting is not clear. In recent years, the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals had gone to the likes of Hootie & The Blowfish, Santana, a pair of wins for Peabo Bryson and something called The Brian Setzer Orchestra.

Steely Dan’s win almost seemed like a hit on young people, what with all their downloading and piracy – at least those buying ‘Two Against Nature’ were the dads with massive CD collections – albums they’d paid for twice when they decided to replace all their old records, marvelling at the crystal clear sound quality, in part because their LPs had been used for rolling joints on and sat under the stairs for over a decade.

‘Two Against Nature’ was a win for the physical format, and you downloaders be damned with your stoopid mis-titled mp3 files.

Eminem’s slap-in-the-face straightforwardness of his Marshall Mathers LP may have lost out, and Steely Dan – winning with an album that generally doesn’t even feature in the Top 5 of Dan fans – but Fagen couldn’t let the evening go without a little wryness. Backstage after the awards, he thanked Eminem for “taking the heat” for controversy, while winning a prize for a song that vamps up the bleakness of a character promoting incest. And Becker, asked about how he felt about ‘Two Against Nature’ compared to ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’? One word: “favourably.”

In that small window of the USA turning itself into a fully colonial power, old business fighting against new models, pop versus rock, oldheads versus new, Steely Dan found themselves in a maelstrom and something of a culture war, and soon, we would all become terminally online and somehow, Fagen and Becker’s cynicism and meticulous grooves were reappraised and provided a perfect soundtrack for young geeks.

At the time, Fagen simply said: “It’s nice to win one of these”. Perfectly understated. Oblivious to the trends and furore, ‘Two Against Nature’ was exactly that.