Musically, it is a complex jazz-rock composition driven by its bass, guitar and piano parts, typical of the band's sound from this period; its lyrics look askance at the album-oriented rock format of many FM radio stations at that time. It was the first single Steely Dan released on MCA Records (which had released the soundtrack), predating MCA's acquisition of ABC Records, the band's previous label, by one year. At the time of its release, the band's album Aja was enjoying great critical and commercial success, leading some listeners to assume that "FM" was also on that album. It was not, although it has since been included on some of the band's compilation albums. However, it had been recorded during the same sessions as Aja and employed some of the same studio musicians and recording personnel, in addition to band members and songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Among them were saxophonist Pete Christlieb and drummer Jeff Porcaro; several members of the Eagles sang backing vocals. Several aspects of the song make it notable among the band's work. It was the first time Becker and Fagen had written music for a film since 1971's "You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat", a year before Steely Dan released its debut album. It also features a string section arranged and conducted by Johnny Mandel, only the second time the band had used strings in a song. Lastly, it is the only time that Becker (bass and guitar) and Fagen (piano) have handled most of a song's instrumental work themselves. Engineer Roger Nichols won that year's Grammy Award for Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical for his work on "FM", the only time that award was ever given for a single song. Donald Fagen told American Songwriter in 2013, 35 years later, that the process of writing and recording the song was rather straightforward. He and Becker were in California finishing up Aja when the call came. "There was a film called FM and we were asked to do the title song," he recalled. "And I said, 'Does it have to have any specific words?' And they said, 'No, it just has to be about FM radio.'" It took a day or two to write. But they knew what was expected of them. "We wrote a song that would sound good with a big production, and an overdub of strings that would sound good coming out of movie-theater speakers," Fagen says in Reelin' in the Years, Brian Sweet's 2007 history of the band. It would be the band's first use of strings in a song since the short "Through with Buzz", on 1974's Pretzel Logic, and only the second time in their career overall. When they went to the studio, they were able to record it as quickly as they had written it. It was built up from a click track. Fagen played piano, and Becker handled all the bass and guitar work, including the solo on the song's outro. This was the only time on a Steely Dan song where the two of them performed most of the instrumental work. They were accompanied by musicians who had played with the band on their Aja sessions. Studio veteran Jeff Porcaro, who had then also recently helped form Toto, plays the drums. Jazz great Pete Christlieb plays the tenor saxophone solo, and Timothy B. Schmit, who had recently left Poco, was joined by his new bandmates in the Eagles, Glenn Frey and Don Henley, in singing backing vocals. "Johnny Mandel came in and did the string chart," Fagen recalled to American Songwriter. "It was fun to meet [him]." Roger Nichols, who had been the engineer for the Aja sessions, did the same for "FM". In the movie FM, disc jockeys (DJs) at a popular FM radio station take it over to prevent the station's management from capitulating to the demands of advertisers. They ultimately succeed, supposedly 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 the time of the film, "FM rock radio had evolved ... into one of music's chief promotional tools, and as such, was ripe for ridicule." He 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. Since the film and its double-album soundtrack otherwise took themselves so seriously, "it fell to Steely Dan to interject a little wit into the proceedings," Breithaupt suggests. 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." "If 'FM' (the lyric) is an argument for adventurousness," Breithaupt writes, "then 'FM' (the music) is an instance of its own doctrine, with twists and turns aplenty." It 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. But 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 Breithupt 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. Breithaupt continues: "A standard minor blues turnaround brings us back to the top of the phrase, and we find ourselves, eight lines into the song, having heard four key changes, some cuíca and marimba by Victor Feldman, and a string section arranged and conducted by none other than Hollywood veteran Johnny Mandel. (If that sounds like a recipe for late seventies corporate rock, your Styx albums were different from mine)". The verse then repeats, with more Becker guitar fills, but this time, 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. 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.