Let's Dance
| David Bowie
Let's Dance
Let's Dance is the 15th studio album by David Bowie. It was originally released in April 1983, almost three years after his previous album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). Co-produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, the album contains three of his most successful singles; the title track, "Let's Dance", which reached No. 1 in the UK, US and various other countries, as well as "Modern Love" and "China Girl", which both reached No. 2 in the UK. "China Girl" was a new version of a song that Bowie had co-written with Iggy Pop for the latter's 1977 album The Idiot.
It also contains a re-recorded version of the song "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", which had reached number one in New Zealand, Norway and Sweden a year earlier. Let's Dance was nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy Award in 1984 but lost to Michael Jackson's Thriller. It has sold 10.7 million copies worldwide, making it Bowie's best-selling album. It is Bowie's eighteenth official album release since his debut in 1967, including two live albums, one covers album (Pin Ups, 1973), and a collaboration with the Philadelphia Orchestra (1978).
At one point Bowie described the album as "a rediscovery of white-English-ex-art-school-student-meets-black-American-funk, a refocusing of Young Americans". Let's Dance was also a stepping stone for the career of the Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who played on it. The album was released as a limited edition picture disc in 1983. The album was re-mastered in 2018 and included in the Bowie box set Loving the Alien (1983-1988) (2018). Critical reviews for Let's Dance as an album have been mixed, although Rolling Stone later described it as "the conclusion of arguably the greatest 14-year run in rock history".
Bowie felt he had to continue to pander to the new mass audience he acquired with the album, which led to him releasing two further solo albums in 1984 and 1987 which, despite their relative commercial success, did not sell as well as Let's Dance, were poorly received by critics at the time and subsequently dismissed by Bowie himself as his "Phil Collins years". Bowie would help form the hard rock and grunge-predecessor band Tin Machine in 1989 in an effort to rejuvenate himself artistically. - Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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BBC
The album that set the template for 1980s Bowie, for better and worse..
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ALL MUSIC
they're catchy, accessible pop songs that have just enough of an alien edge to make them distinctive. However, that careful balance is quickly thrown off by a succession of pleasant but unremarkable plastic soul workouts. "Cat People" and a cover of Metro's "Criminal World" are relatively strong songs, but the remainder of the album indicates that Bowie was entering a songwriting slump. However, the three hits were enough to make the album a massive hit, and their power hasn't diminished over the years, even if the rest of the record sounds like an artifact.
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RollingStone
It’s a great, giddy moment: David Bowie cuts a rug, and cuts the crap. Love is the answer, get down and boogie. Let’s dance, indeed.
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Classic Rock Review
The surprise commercial success of the album proved to be a double-edged sword – it did introduce a whole new generation to the artist but also initiated a prolonged artistic “slump” starting with the disappointing follow-up Tonight a year later, and lasting the better part of a decade.
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sputnik music
Let’s Dance is a fun dance pop album with soul, funk, rock and some solid song writing from Bowie. It is not as complex as earlier albums, and not as interesting lyrically as his concept albums, but a fun and entertaining listen from time to time and remains one of his most memorable recordings of the 80’s.
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Secret Meeting
There are many elements that make it so adored. You have Rodgers’ production, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar work and the arsenal of brass and synths that light up the album. But do not let this detract from the fundamental element makes it so special: David Bowie. So today, drop the needle on this fine record, put on your red shoes, and dance the blues.
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The Guardian
Like the best pop records, it was the perfect snapshot of the time.
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Chord Company
Brilliant musicians, a great singer, really good songs, great production and Stevie Ray Vaughan at his very best, plus you even get Nile Rodgers’ bass playing partner, Bernard Edwards on one of the songs. What’s not to like?
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John Mcferrin
this album is decent and then some, and not just because of the great guitar contributions from Stevie Ray Vaughn (whose presence on the album, while very welcome, makes almost no sense in retrospect).
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Only Solitaire
Bowie sells out at last. But what the heck, there are some masterpieces here, as well. Do not evade this album.
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Adrian Denning
We remember this album for the singles and for one fabulous summer in the 80s when it seemed wherever you went thats 'Let's Dance' was on the radio.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Review
All of it is powered by funky, up-beat bass lines in Bowie's late 70s style; an energetic R & B horn section; and famous dead bluesman/Hendrix imitator Stevie Ray Vaughan, who adds some brief but brilliant guitar solos that really lift the record.
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Don Ignacio
I'll concede that it's OK. But even then, I find zero urge to dance to it.
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Robert Christgau
Anyone who wants Dave's $17 million fling to flop doesn't understand how little good motives have to do with good rock and roll. Rodgers & Bowie are a rich combo in the ways that count as well as the ways that don't, and this stays up throughout, though it's perfunctory professional surface does make one wonder whether Bowie-the-thespian really cares much about pop music these days. "Modern Love" is the only interesting new song, the remakes are pleasantly pointless, and rarely has such a lithe rhythm player been harnessed to such a flat groove. Which don't mean the world won't dance to it.
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Fortitude Magazine-35 years later
A beautiful piece of art from the late great Brit rock icon.
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Medium
I’m glad that this album’s reputation has been restored in recent years, because it’s a ton of fun. It’s dumb and poppy and lightweight, but it’s purposefully all of those things. It’s the antithesis of “Low”, but it’s still fun. If you don’t like “Modern Love”, you’re a real drip.
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Mark Prindle
Everything is perfectly synthetic, sterile and note-exact. The instrumentation is dull, but (pirate) the melodies are so appealing, he had a bunch of hits! Reinventing himself (like Madonna or the baby Jesus) as the "Thin White Dork," David is a neatly dressed, sophisticated, low-voiced boring old fuck now. But again! The songs are captivating! Three hits - the peppy "Modern Love" (not to be confused with the Hall & Oates prog rock epic "Method Of Modern Love"), the oriental "China Girl," which slickens up the original Iggy Pop cover of David Bowie's "China Girl" and last but not least, "Cat People" which made the charts.
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