Songoftheday 9/7/12 - Standing tough under stars and stripes we can tell this dreams in sight...

Donald Fagen - "I.G.Y. (What A Beautiful World)"
from the album The Nightfly (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (three weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 7

Today's Song of the Day is by Donald Fagen, who is the lead singer of one of the most coolest of jazz-rock outfits that ever was, Steely Dan. Along with his musical partner Walter Becker, and a revolving cast of studio musicians, the Dan racked up a three top-10 albums and a couple top-10 singles in America from 1972 to 1980, where after releasing the Gaucho album, went on a hiatus. Fagen moved to Hawaii, and started recording his first solo album, The Nightfly, which sounded like the newer SD material. The first single was named for the International Geophysical Year, which ran from 1957 to 1958, when a short detente after the death of Stalin warmed Russo-American relations, and stimulated scientific outreach to countries around the world, including exploration in Antarctica and the Sputnik satellite. Embedded in the lyrics are fantasies of neo-modern things to come, and the tune was written by Fagen and produced by longtime Steely Dan associate Gary Katz...

 The retro funky song was a crossover hit on the pop (#26), rock (#17), adult contemporary (#8), and even the R&B/Black Singles chart (#54). The album also just missed the top-10, peaking at #11 on the US Top 200 Albums chart. The song garnered a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year, as well as the album.

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British keyboardist Howard Jones included a cover of the song on his Best of Howard Jones album in 1993.

in 2000 French singer Benjamin Diamond sampled the track for the Alan Braxe mix of his single "In Your Arms (We Gonna Make It)"

and in 2002 the a cappella jazz group Take 6 took "I.G.Y." into a more spiritual route...

Up tomorrow: pop-rock journeyman Squeezes out a solo hit.