Donald Jay Fagen (born January 10, 1948) is an American musician who was the co-founder, lead singer, co-songwriter, and keyboardist of the band Steely Dan, formed in the early 1970s with musical partner Walter Becker.

In addition to his work with Steely Dan, Fagen has released four solo albums, beginning with The Nightfly in 1982, which was nominated for seven Grammys.

When he was ten years old, he moved with his parents and younger sister to Kendall Park, a newly constructed suburban section of South Brunswick, New Jersey.

"[6] In the early 1960s, beginning at age 12, he often went to the Village Vanguard, where he was particularly impressed by Earl Hines, Willie "the Lion" Smith, and Bill Evans.

[7] He regularly took the bus to Manhattan to see performances by jazz musicians Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis.

[7] After graduating from South Brunswick High School in 1965, he enrolled at Bard College to study English literature, where he met[9] Walter Becker in a coffee house in 1967.

[13] Becker and Fagen began to form Steely Dan in the summer of 1970, responding to a Village Voice ad for "a bassist and keyboard player with jazz chops" placed by guitarist Denny Dias.

[14] (Fans of Beat Generation literature, Fagen and Becker named the band after a steam-powered vibrator mentioned in the William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch.

[15][16][17]) The group's first lineup was assembled in December 1971 in Los Angeles, where Becker and Fagen had relocated to work as staff songwriters for ABC/Dunhill.

After the release of their third LP in 1974, the other members left or were fired from the band, which evolved into a studio project headed by Becker and Fagen.

[24] In 2007, Fagen's first three albums were released in a box set, Nightfly Trilogy, in the MVI (Music Video Interactive) format.

Each album features DTS 5.1, Dolby 5.1 and PCM Stereo mix but no MLP encoded track, along with bonus audio and video content.

He wrote the liner notes to Can't Buy a Thrill under the name Tristan Fabriani, which he used on stage when he played keyboards for Jay and the Americans (Becker used Gus Mahler).

On his solo albums, when he played or programmed a synthesizer part to replicate a real instrument (bass, vibraphone, horns) he credited one of his aliases: Illinois Elohainu, Phonus Quaver, or Harlan Post.

Although he learned to become an entertainer, early on Fagen suffered from severe stage fright, which prompted Steely Dan producer Gary Katz to hire David Palmer to sing two songs on Steely Dan's debut album, Can't Buy a Thrill.

According to Robert Christgau, in terms of lyrics, Fagen is a "pathological ironist"[28] who "doesn't much care about hippies" or the message of his generation's counterculture: "His '60s are the Kennedy years, when a smart, somewhat shallow suburban white kid could dream of Brubeck and bohemia and bomb-shelter wingdings and transoceanic rail links to exotic locales.

On January 4, 2016, Titus sustained injuries after Fagen allegedly shoved her against a marble window frame at their Upper East Side apartment.