Hey Nineteen


"Hey Nineteen" is a song from the band Steely Dan from their album Gaucho that describes an intergenerational seduction. Besides the composing duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, musicians include Hugh McCracken, Rick Marotta, Victor Feldman, and Steve Gadd, and Frank Floyd and Zack Sanders. The song peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and appeared at number 11 on Top Adult Contemporary charts through 1993.

Background

The song was released as the first single from the band's 1980 album Gaucho, and was produced by Gary Katz. The single's B-side is the 1974 live version of the song "Bodhisattva", with an introduction by an inebriated Jerome Aniton, one of the band's drivers, a single that was recorded at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and was previously unreleased. As described by Bernstein, "Hey Nineteen" would become among the most played at the band's live performances, despite having gone unplayed by Becker and Fagen with their "part ways in 1981"; its live performances only began with their reunion in 1993.

Lyrics and music

Lyrics

According to Will Layman, writing for Popmatters.com, the song "was about a middle-aged man's disappointment with a young lover"; as described by Scott Bernstein for Jambase.com, in the song, "an older man is seducing a 19-year-old girl. He’s a bit conflicted... However, on this particular night and with the help of some Cuervo Gold tequila, everything is wonderful."
Hence, the lyrics present an older man contemplating a romantic encounter with a 19-year-old with whom he has little in common; for example, she does not recognize a song by "'Retha Franklin". The song ends ambiguously, mentioning, "The Cuervo Gold" and "fine Colombian", going on to say that these "make tonight a wonderful thing", again emphasizing the age difference. Hence, as Stewart Mason states in his AllMusic review, the listener is "... unclear as to whether the singer's been left alone with "the Cuervo Gold/the fine Colombian"... or whether he's just resorted to getting the girl drunk and stoned enough to stop resisting".

Music

Walter Becker of Steely Dan described the band's music as "a whole new kind of bizarre concerto music" with the band "doing the very, very best contemporary disco-jazz-funk-space muzak with a reggae twist". In a generally negative review emphasizing this particular song's lyrical choices, Stewart Mason of AllMusic.com describes the song's melody as "lazy", with a "lackadaisical ultra-mellow drift", similarly addressing the song's arrangement, which he refers to as "possibly unconscious self-satire... is so hermetically airtight and studiedly slick that it verges upon the mechanical".

Charts

"Hey Nineteen" peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in early 1981, number 11 on the Top Adult Contemporary charts through 1993, and, through 2022, its number 68 on the Billboard.com Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. On the Hot 100 Billboard.com chart, with a run of 19 weeks, "Hey Nineteen" is tied with "Peg" and "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", for being Steely Dan's longest-running chart hit.

Credits

Band members appearing on the recording of the single were: