Canadian studio musician Don Breithaupt included a chapter on the song in his book on
Aja for
Bloomsbury Publishing's
33⅓ series since it was recorded during the same sessions. "FM", he writes, combines lyrics that subvert the film the song served as a theme for, with sophisticated and complex music.
Lyrics In his analysis of the song's lyrics, Breithaupt recounted how in the film,
disc jockeys at a popular FM radio station take it over to prevent the station's management from capitulating to the demands of advertisers, reaffirming the values of the idiosyncratic, DJ-driven
freeform and
progressive FM rock stations that had emerged in the medium's early years during the late 1960s. But by 1978, he observed, "FM rock radio had evolved ... into one of music's chief promotional tools, and as such, was ripe for ridicule." Breithaupt notes the irony that the battle at the center of the film's plot had, "by 1978 ... already been fought and lost in every major market in North America" where the more commercially oriented
album-oriented rock (AOR) had become the dominant FM format. Breithaupt suggested that "it fell to Steely Dan to interject a little wit into the proceedings". The song's first verse celebrates partying barefoot with cheap "grapefruit wine", but the narrator (Fagen) is dismayed by the music selection playing on the accompanying FM radio—"nothing but blues and
Elvis / And somebody else's favorite songs," instead of the "hungry
reggae" and "funked-up
Muzak" he would like to hear. Other listeners, he realizes, are indifferent to the specifics of the radio playlist: "The girls don't seem to care ... as long as the mood is right ... as long as they play till dawn". The
chorus's overlapping harmonies of "
no static at all" suggest a station identification. But it seems "less like a technical boast than an admission that nothing on the airwaves was likely to surprise anyone," Breithaupt writes. "In its haste to wipe out background noise, FM had forgotten all about foreground noise."
Music The song begins with an overture, as Fagen repeats two pairs of thirds on a piano, a figure that, S. Victor Aaron writes, "prowls like a panther" while Becker adds bass flourishes and guitar licks, accented by
cymbal crashes from
Porcaro. "[It] goes to some lengths to establish the key of A major," Breithaupt notes. On the repeat of a plucked guitar phrase, the overture resolves with the guitar and piano joining for a
tonic chord, after which the verse begins with three slightly
arpeggiated piano chords—in the key of E minor. The verse is built around what Breithaupt describes as a "swampy, hypnotic groove," in which Becker plays overdubbed bass and guitar parts in
parallel fifths, suggesting the work of
Henry Mancini, alternating with Fagen's piano chords, backed by a steady hi-hat and snare drum beat. This basic two-bar
Dorian figure, sounding like some of Steely Dan's other uptempo songs, like "
Josie" (a hit for the band around the same time, from
Aja) slowed down to two-thirds speed, continues for the first seven bars of the verse. "On the phrase 'girls don't seem to care,' the harmonic movement begins in earnest," Breithaupt observes, as the string section also enters and Becker adds some guitar
fills. The descending
melody is carried by similar chord changes, from Cmaj
7 to F7 and B7, ending on an Emaj
9. That last chord moves the key to E major as well for just a measure, when an A
13 changes it to B major, which is again changed by an Am9-Em9
cadence back to E minor, but not without an A/C suggesting the Dorian mode again. Breithaupt continues: The verse then repeats, with more Becker guitar fills, but when it reaches the Emaj9, it stays in that key. "The 'first ending' never recurs," says Breithaupt. Instead, the strings rise as the song goes into its brief chorus. Three overlapping backing vocals sing "no static at all" twice, and then after a quarter-note rest, Fagen joins them for the song's title and one more "no static at all." A guitar
lick afterwards repeats its melody. This leads into a resumption of the verse groove for four bars, then a descending line brings the song to
Pete Christlieb's
tenor sax solo. The groove changes slightly here, as Becker's bass and guitar part becomes a little less sparse, Fagen adds piano fills, and Porcaro opens up with the cymbals. Harmonically it is similar to the verse but with some new variations. "An Em9 and A13 suggest E Dorian is still in effect," Breithaupt writes, "but, in addition to functioning as I and IV in that mode, they become, by implication, II and V when the progression shifts into D major for a four-bar
chromatic descent related to the intros of [
Aja singles] '
Peg' and '
Deacon Blues'". In the longer version of Christlieb's solo on the instrumental B-side "FM (reprise)", Breithaupt continues, Christlieb's solo continues for another 50 bars, allowing him at one point to "state a fully formed F blues lick over the E minor
vamp, selling it through sheer melodic logic and rhythmic momentum." After the solo, the second verse and chorus repeat. Becker begins playing what Aaron describes as his "uncluttered, blues-kissed and memorable guitar solo" —"the track's most AOR-sounding element", according to Breithaupt—over the song's nearly two-minute outro. Underneath him, the verse groove continues, with
Jeff Porcaro's drumming becoming more aggressive and Feldman adding more percussion fills. The song ends with a slow fade. ==Versions==