Ken Tucker writes in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll: "What Aja offered was just about the opposite of the quirky, opaque little pop tunes with which Becker and Fagen had commenced their career, and the album allowed lots of pop fans to feel they'd penetrated the cool precincts of jazz at exactly the moment when 'cool' was making a comeback via disco. For the first time, really, a massive audience had gotten a bead on Steely Dan, and millions liked what they'd deduced: hitmakers behaving like cult artists."