Let's Dance (David Bowie album)

David Bowie released his 14th studio album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980. With the record, Bowie achieved what biographer David Buckley calls "the perfect balance" of creativity and mainstream success.[1] Following the sessions, Bowie portrayed the lead role of Joseph "John" Merrick in the Broadway play The Elephant Man between late July 1980 and early January 1981.[2][3] During this time, he also filmed an appearance in the Uli Edel film Christiane F. (1981).[4]

The murder of John Lennon in December 1980 affected Bowie deeply;[lower-alpha 1] he cancelled an upcoming Scary Monsters tour and withdrew to his home in Switzerland, becoming a recluse but continuing to work.[2][6] In July 1981, he collaborated with Giorgio Moroder for "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", the title song of the Paul Schrader film Cat People (1982), and in the same session, recorded "Under Pressure" with the rock band Queen.[7][8] Shortly after, he played the title role in a BBC adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play Baal, directed by Alan Clarke. Recorded in August 1981 and transmitted in March 1982, Bowie also recorded an accompanying soundtrack EP, released through RCA in February to coincide with the transmission.[9] During the year, Bowie filmed appearances in The Hunger and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, both released in 1983.[10][11] During filming for the latter, he grew fond of artists from the 1950s and 1960s, including James Brown, Buddy Guy, Elmore James and Albert King. The musical ideals from these artists would greatly influence the new album.[12]

Scary Monsters was Bowie's final studio album for RCA Records, his label since Hunky Dory (1971).[13] Having grown increasingly dissatisfied with the label, who he felt was "milking" his back catalogue,[12] he was also eager for the September 1982 expiration of his 1975 severance settlement with his old manager Tony Defries.[14] Although RCA was willing to re-sign, alongside Columbia and Geffen Records, Bowie signed a new contract with EMI America Records for an estimated $17 million.[15]

Wanting a commercial hit, Bowie hired Nile Rodgers (pictured in 1999) to co-produce the album.

With a new label and an idea for a commercial sound, Bowie wanted to begin fresh with a new producer. He chose Nile Rodgers of the R&B band Chic, one of the most commercially successful bands of the late 1970s, with hits such as "Le Freak" (1978) and "Good Times" (1979).[15] According to biographer Nicholas Pegg, contemporary listeners considered Rodgers' writing and production work, including Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" (1979) and Diana Ross's "Upside Down" (1980),[16] to be "dance classics".[12] Bowie and Rodgers met each other at the Continental in New York City in autumn 1982, where they found they had similar influences in old blues and R&B music.[15][12] Speaking to Musician in 1983, Rodgers said: "David could have had any producer – white or black – he wanted. He could have gone with Quincy Jones and a more sure-fire chance at a hit. But he called me up, and for that I feel honoured."[12]

Tony Visconti, the producer of Bowie's last four studio albums, was originally scheduled to produce the new album and set time aside to record. However, Bowie neglected to inform Visconti that he chose Rodgers for the project, the producer eventually learning through Bowie's assistant Coco Schwab closer to December 1982. Deeply hurt,[15][12] the move damaged the two men's relationship and Visconti did not work with Bowie on a studio album again for nearly 20 years (until 2002's Heathen).[17] In a 2023 interview with SuperDeluxeEdition, Visconti stated that in hindsight, he believed Bowie was right to seek out a new producer given his desire for commercial success, drawing comparisons with his own work with other artists in-between Bowie projects.[18]

Bowie and Rodgers regrouped at the latter's home in Montreux, Switzerland, to begin demo work.[15] The producer, who was expecting to make Scary Monsters 2, was surprised to learn Bowie had a different idea,[16] saying "'Nile, I really want you to make hits.' And I was sort of taken aback, because I'd always assumed that David Bowie did art first, and then if it happened to become a hit, so be it!"[12] The producer was initially disappointed he would not be able to use the record as a way to earn respect from white audiences, but knew he would do what he did best in order to guarantee a hit. Bowie played his new songs on a twelve-string acoustic guitar,[15] starting with "Let's Dance" in a soft vocal arrangement. Rodgers knew it was not a dance song, but took old '50s and '60s records to arrange the track into the finished product.[19] Over three days, the two demoed the new tracks, with assistance from the Turkish multi-instrumentalist Erdal Kızılçay, who would later become a frequent collaborator of Bowie's.[12]

Let's Dance was recorded at the Power Station in New York City (where Bowie had also recorded Scary Monsters[12]) during the first three weeks of December 1982,[lower-alpha 2][15] and was completed in 17 days.[19][21] The engineer for the sessions was Bob Clearmountain.[22] Rodgers felt that the record's sound was aided by the ambience of the studio: "The Power Station is famous for its great drum sound. And we had great players too."[23] Along with a new producer, an entirely new set of musicians were hired for the record, with Bowie stating: "I wanted to have a little relief from the guys that I usually work with. I wanted to try people that I'd never worked with before, so that I couldn't predict how they were going to play."[lower-alpha 3][21] Long-time collaborator Carlos Alomar, who had worked with Bowie since the mid-1970s and would continue to work with Bowie into the mid-1990s, was originally scheduled to contribute, but claimed he was offered an "embarrassing" fee and declined.[23][24] In 1984, Alomar clarified he did not play on Let's Dance because he was only given two weeks' notice and was already booked with other work.[25]

With Alomar gone, Rodgers took his place on rhythm guitar. The producer also recruited his regular Chic collaborators: keyboardist Robert Sabino, percussionist Sammy Figueroa and backing vocalists Frank and George Simms. The remaining musicians included drummer Omar Hakim (whom Bowie called "a fascinating drummer with impeccable timing"); bassist Carmine Rojas; trumpeter Mac Gollehon; and saxophonists Stan Harrison, Robert Aaron and Steve Elson.[12] Near the end of the sessions, Rodgers hired Chic drummer Tony Thompson and bassist Bernard Edwards for additional work; he was reluctant to hire them earlier due to their past drug use. Due to their arrival time, Thompson and Edwards' contributions were limited, appearing on only three tracks and one track, respectively. Edwards recorded his part for "Without You" in 13 minutes, with Rodgers later writing in his memoir, "I was never more proud of him in my life and it happened on the last day of basic recording."[12] For the first time ever, Bowie himself played no instruments on the album, stating at the time: "I don't play a damned thing. This was a singer's album."[21] He recorded all of his vocals in two days.[12]

Blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan (pictured in 1983) plays lead guitar on the record.

At the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, Bowie saw Stevie Ray Vaughan play guitar. At the time, Vaughan was an unknown 28-year-old blues guitarist from Texas; his debut album with his band Double Trouble was still unreleased.[12][23] After Vaughan's performance, Bowie was so impressed that he tracked him down months later to get him to play lead guitar on the album.[21] Rodgers was initially unimpressed with Vaughan, believing he sounded like American blues guitarist Albert King. Bowie however felt Vaughan was different, saying "he's got a whole other thing going on."[19] Vaughan recorded his guitar overdubs towards the end of the sessions.[12] According to author Paul Trynka, he used an old Fender Stratocaster plugged into an old Fender amplifier, "all the tone coming from the player".[19] In a contemporary interview, Vaughan described the recording sessions: "Bowie is real easy to work with. He knows what he's doing in the studio and he doesn't mess around ... He'd give his opinion on the stuff he liked and the stuff that needed work. Almost everything was cut in one or two takes. I think there was only one thing that needed three takes."[26] According to Vaughan's biographers Joe Patoski and Bill Crawford, Vaughan played on six of the album's eight songs.[27] In the biography Strange Fascination, Buckley found Vaughan to be a "bizarre" choice for lead guitarist, as at the time, he was "about as far away from Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew as you could get".[28] Bowie and Rodgers praised Vaughan's work on the album, with the latter becoming one of Vaughan's closest friends after the sessions.[12][23]

After the sessions concluded, Bowie went on holiday in Mexico,[lower-alpha 4] before returning to New York to finish post-production work and close his deal with EMI America at the end of January 1983. Upon closure, Bowie delivered Let's Dance to the label and departed for Australia to film music videos for the first two singles.[12]

Commentators characterise the songs on Let's Dance as post-disco,[30] dance,[31][32] dance-rock,[32][33] new wave and dance-pop.[34][35] Consequence of Sound calls the record "the sound in favour of pure disco, dance, and funk with Bowie coming down to earth" and that Bowie built upon the post-punk and new wave sound of its predecessor.[36][37] Author James E. Perone notes the blues-edge inflicted by Vaughan, praising his contributions on "Modern Love", "China Girl" and "Without You".[31] In an interview with Details magazine in 1991, Bowie described the album as "a rediscovery of white-English-ex-art-school-student-meets-black-American-funk, a refocusing of Young Americans (1975)".[38] Artist Tanja Stark sees the commercial tempo of the album masking the lyrical continuity of Bowie's ongoing narratives of spiritual struggle and death anxieties.[39]

Upon release, Let's Dance entered the UK Albums Chart at number one and stayed there for three weeks.[61] Although Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups (both 1973) and Diamond Dogs (1974) were at the top position longer, Let's Dance remained on the chart for over a year.[12] The album peaked at number four on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart on 24 June 1983, and remained on the chart for 69 weeks.[62] EMI declared Let's Dance to be their fastest-selling record since the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Bowie's old label RCA issued a collection of Bowie's back catalogue as a way to cash in on its success.[12] All of Bowie's albums he released between 1969 and 1974: Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups and Diamond Dogs, as well as Low and "Heroes" (both 1977), all began to chart again.[40] By July, Bowie had ten albums in the UK top 100. This feat made Bowie the artist with the second highest number of individual album-weeks of all time – with 198, behind the rock band Dire Straits, who achieved 217 individual album-weeks in 1986.[12]

Let's Dance has sold 10.7 million copies worldwide, making it Bowie's best-selling album.[63]

Professional ratings

Initial reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
Rolling Stone	[49]
Smash Hits	6½/10[64]
The Village Voice	B[65]

Despite the album's major commercial success, it received mixed reviews from music critics, with opinions varying on the artistic content. In Musician magazine, David Fricke called it "Bowie at his best".[25][66] In a piece on Bowie for Time in July 1983, Jay Cocks described the album as "unabashedly commercial, melodically alliterative and lyrically smart at the same time".[67] Robert Christgau felt that it had a "perfunctory professional surface", and that other than the "interesting" "Modern Love", Let's Dance was "pleasantly pointless".[65] While Steve Bush of Smash Hits found it overall dull,[64] Debra Rae Cohen of The New York Times deemed it Bowie's "most artless" record yet, but one whose familiar dance music is "almost timeless in its appeal".[68] Tucker felt Let's Dance sounded great, with an intelligent simplicity and a "surface beauty", but that as a whole it was "thin and niggling", other than "Modern Love," "Without You" and "Shake It", which offered "some of the most daring songwriting of Bowie's career".[49]

Several critics commented on the music. Writing for Record magazine, Carol Cooper called the album "the Young Americans of the '80s" and enjoyed Rodgers' involvement, writing that his presence allows Bowie to shine through. However, she felt all the tracks were "rather modest".[69] More positively, NME's Charles Shaar Murray gave unanimous praise to the album, calling it "some of the strongest, simplest and least complicated music that Bowie has ever made." Further describing it as "warm, strong, inspiring and useful," he approved of Vaughan's contributions, saying he gives the songs a more "traditional" feel.[70] John Walker of Trouser Press hailed it as a record that "simply bleaches the competition", one that represents "the closest Bowie has come to capturing pure energy".[71] Offering further praise, Billboard deemed it "Bowie's most accessible music in years",[32] Cash Box hailed it as his "most danceable album to date",[72] and Commonweal called it "some of the most exciting R&B-based dance music in years."[12] NME later placed Let's Dance at number 13 in its end-of-the-year list.[73]

Bowie performing on the Serious Moonlight Tour in 1983

To support Let's Dance, Bowie embarked on his first concert tour in five years, the Serious Moonlight Tour, which ran from 18 May to 8 December 1983.[74] Taking its title from a lyric in the title track,[46] rehearsals began in the spring of 1983, with Alomar back as bandleader.[75] The majority of the Let's Dance musicians returned, with the exception of Vaughan, who was present for rehearsals but let go by Bowie just days before the European leg was scheduled to begin. His dismissal was attributed to his alcohol and drug use, his request that his band Double Trouble be the supporting act, which Bowie denied, and his alleged displeasure to Bowie miming his guitar solo in the "Let's Dance" video. Vaughan's replacement was Diamond Dogs Tour (1974) and Station to Station (1976) guitarist Earl Slick.[74][75]

The tour's set pieces were created by the Diamond Dogs Tour artist Mark Ravitz. The set, Bowie's most elaborate yet, featured structures such as large columns, overhanging lintels and a giant right hand pointed upwards. Compared to prior tours, Serious Moonlight emphasised lights rather than props.[74] Alomar later told Buckley that it was his favourite Bowie tour, mainly because "it was the first tour where we did all the hits".[75] Discussing the setlist, Pegg states it was "unashamedly a greatest hits package aimed at acquainting the new mass audience with Bowie's back catalogue".[74] Buckley describes the setlist as "relatively mainstream pop-rock", with none of the "quirks" of the late '70s tours. Many of the arrangements were redone with horns to make every song sound fresh.[75]

Serious Moonlight was a massive success: it became the biggest tour of 1983, appeased Bowie's newfound audience and, along with Let's Dance, turned Bowie into a massive superstar. The tour was mostly well-received, although British reviewers tended to be more aggressive than American ones.[74] An accompanying film documenting two shows performed on 11 and 12 September 1983 in Vancouver was released in 1984 as Serious Moonlight.[76] Although immensely successful, Bowie later called the tour a mixed blessing: "I was something I never wanted to be. I was a well-accepted artist. I had started appealing to people who bought Phil Collins albums. [...] I suddenly didn't know my audience and worse, I didn't care about them."[74] Following the tour's conclusion, Bowie found himself in a creative stalemate. Pressure from the label to release a follow-up led him into the studio in the spring of 1984 unprepared. The resulting album, Tonight, is considered one of his creative low-points.[77]

Let's Dance was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards in 1984 but lost to Michael Jackson's Thriller (1982).[12] Although Bowie had charged Rodgers with making hits for him,[78] Bowie later said in 1997: "At the time, Let's Dance was not mainstream. It was virtually a new kind of hybrid, using blues-rock guitar against a dance format. There wasn't anything else that really quite sounded like that at the time. So, it only seems commercial in hindsight because it sold so many [copies]. It was great in its way, but it put me in a real corner in that it fucked with my integrity."[79] Two years earlier, he stated he intended for it to be a one-off project only: "I had every intention of continuing to do some unusual material after that. But the success of that record really forced me, in a way, to continue the beast. It was my own doing, of course, but I felt, after a few years, that I had gotten stuck."[80] Visconti stated in 1985 that "it was an album he had to make".[12]

The album's success caused Bowie to hit a creative low point in his career lasting the next few years.[38][79] By 1987, Bowie began to distance himself from the record, telling one interviewer that it was "more Nile's album than mine", to which Rodgers disagreed in 1998.[12] After his follow-up albums Tonight and Never Let Me Down (1987) were critically dismissed,[81]—Bowie would later dismiss this period as his "Phil Collins years"[82]—he formed the rock band Tin Machine in an effort to regain his artistic vision.[83][84]

Professional ratings

Retrospective reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[30]
Blender	[66]
Chicago Tribune	[85]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[86]
Pitchfork	8.4/10[87]
Q	[88]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[89]
Spin Alternative Record Guide	6/10[90]

In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine felt that the album's three hit singles were catchy yet distinctive pop songs, while the rest of the album was "unremarkable plastic soul" indicative of Bowie "entering a songwriting slump".[30] Power wrote that Bowie "pleaded shamelessly for the love of the mass market" with the album. He continued "... the title track was a decent chunk of funk-rock and Bowie did not embarrass himself on the single 'China Girl'. Otherwise, the record had a great deal in common with Wham! and Phil Collins."[47] Quantick praised the combination of Bowie and Rodgers as "perfect" on the title track, the "sweet, romantic" rendition of "China Girl" and highlighted "Criminal World". He stated "Let's Dance may have had a ground-breaking sound and a popularity that Bowie clearly ached for, but it's often a mundane album, as songs like 'Ricochet' and 'Shake It' mark time". He said the album was "literally the template for 80s Bowie – blonde, suited and smiling".[45] Writing in 1995 for the Spin Alternative Record Guide, Rob Sheffield sees the album as exemplifying the influence of the New Romantic movement on Bowie. While lauding "Modern Love", he describes the album's other songs as "dodgier" but "good fun".[90]

In 2014, Andy Greene of Rolling Stone described Let's Dance as "the conclusion of arguably the greatest 14-year run in rock history".[91] Writing for The Guardian the same year, Jeremy Allen stated that the album had "spent time in the wilderness, rejected by many because of its 80s production values", but he added that "a reappraisal was all but inevitable and has coincided with a renaissance in Rodgers' career and an outpouring of love for the unprecedentedly successful producer/guitarist."[92] The chief rock and pop critic of The Guardian, Alexis Petridis, said in his retrospective review of Bowie's career in 2016 that Let's Dance "had its moments", unlike Tonight.[93]

Reflecting on Let's Dance, Pegg agrees with Bowie in that the record was the artist's "least challenging" album up to that point. He felt that unlike Bowie's Glass Spider Tour and Tin Machine periods, where Bowie was willing to take risks and face criticism head-on, Let's Dance plays it safe in every aspect, creating tunes that originally contained "rough edges" that were then "sanded down" and given a "high-gloss finish". Pegg also notes that the appearance of three covers on the record was evident to Bowie hitting a creative slump.[94] Spitz on the other hand, considers Let's Dance to be "as revolutionary" as Ziggy Stardust, Station to Station or Low. He finds it unfair to call it Bowie's "sellout record", saying it is "every bit as high concept as his canonised seventies efforts".[16] Although he finds the record's first four tracks among the strongest of Bowie's entire career, Perone describes Let's Dance as a "double-edged sword", in that it was commercially successful but artistically, it found Bowie exploring more conventional lyrical themes and accessible music that would hinder his next recordings.[31]

On the album's influence, Billboard's Joe Lynch argued that Let's Dance provided "the template" for alternative dance music "for the next 30 years".[95] In 1989, the album was ranked number 83 on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Best Albums of the Eighties".[96] In 2013, NME ranked Let's Dance at number 296 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[97] In 2018, Pitchfork ranked the album at number 127 in their list of "The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s"; Jeremy D. Larson wrote that Let's Dance "sounds anything but dated" and felt it "became a Trojan horse for the world to discover all the many Bowies hiding underneath the blond bouffant and designer suits."[98]

In 1995, Virgin Records rereleased the album on CD with "Under Pressure" as a bonus track.[12][99] EMI did the second rerelease in 1999 (featuring 24-bit digitally remastered sound and no bonus tracks),[100] followed by another in 2003 as a hybrid stereo SACD/PCM CD.[101]

In 2018, Let's Dance was remastered for the Loving the Alien (1983–1988) box set released by Parlophone.[102] It was released in CD, vinyl and digital formats, as part of this compilation and then separately the following year.[103]

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[104]

• David Bowie – lead vocals; producer; engineer; assistant mixing; horn arrangements
• Nile Rodgers – guitar; producer; engineer; assistant mixing; horn arrangements

Musicians

• Stevie Ray Vaughan – lead guitar
• Carmine Rojas – bass guitar
• Bernard Edwards – bass guitar on "Without You"
• Omar Hakim, Tony Thompson – drums
• Sammy Figueroa – percussion
• Robert Sabino – keyboards, piano
• Stan Harrison – tenor saxophone; flute
• Robert Aaron – tenor saxophone
• Steve Elson – baritone saxophone; flute
• Mac Gollehon – trumpet
• Frank Simms, George Simms, David Spinner – backing vocals

Production

• Bob Clearmountain (Fast Forward Productions) – engineer; mixing
• Dave Greenberg – assistant engineer
• Bob Ludwig (Masterdisk) – mastering

Visuals

• Greg Gorman – photography
• Mick Haggerty – package design
• Derek Boshier – cover painting

• Let's Dance at Discogs (list of releases)