10 Most Underrated Classic Rock Albums

Steely Dan has an undeserved reputation as one of the primary acts that your grandparents say were their favorite band. Though the band's trademark sound is less bombastic than your typical rock and roll, their mix of jazz and rock set the precedent for many art rock bands going forward. Even if albums like The Royal Scam and Aja are known as the band's studio masterpieces, their debut Can't Buy a Thrill shows them hitting the ground running.

Under the artistic eye of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, the entire record is a hodgepodge of different genres, almost as if the band is trying to find their sound with each passing track. While there are songs like "Dirty Work" whose blue-eyed soul sound can feel a bit tepid, songs like "Reelin in the Years" and "Change of the Guard" would make any casual music fan stand up and pay attention.

There are nontraditional song structures with each passing track, but it doesn't get any better than "Do It Again," with its hypnotic verses giving way to a mind-blowing electric sitar solo courtesy of Denny Dias. After this album, the band would slowly become an in-studio project, but even at their inception they were creating some of the most colorful sonic textures the rock world had ever seen.