David Bowie ‎Let's Dance

David Bowie Let's Dance

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Bowie teams up with Nile Rogers ex of Chic and creates one of the ultimate commercial albums of the entire 1980s. With ultra-contemporary and impressive production for the day, with Nile Rogers seemingly given a mission by the Bowie team to pack as many hooks into each song as he could. It's a shame that the album fails to maintain its momentum throughout, but with three massive blockbusters to open, that's hardly surprising. 'Modern Love', 'China Girl' and the title track all became worldwide bestsellers and 'Lets Dance' moved David Bowie firmly into rocks mainstream, a position that even with Ziggy, he'd never quite occupied before. Long-term fans bemoaned the lack of strangeness contained on 'Let's Dance' and wanted to keep Bowie out-there and obtuse. He won a legion of new fans. Many listeners were just pleased to have a decent entertaining album to listen to. 'Let's Dance' certainly doesn't really merit any deep analysis at any rate. It is what it is. Nile used classic arranging and production tricks when faced with a song such as 'China Girl'. Eg, you better make sure the music appropriately evokes the songs lryic and title. Similarly, with a song such as 'Let's Dance', you better make sure you can dance to it! Besides the music and contributions of musicians such as Stevie Ray Vaughan on stellar guitar, 'Let's Dance' contains some fine Bowie vocals throughout, his voice deeper than during his seventies days and really reaching fine heights during the fine and entertaining 'Cat People', for example. Still, back to those three stellar singles. 'China Girl' may well have been previously given by Bowie to Iggy Pop to record, yet this version adds all those shiny Nile Rodgers moments such as an utterly distinctive and suitably chinese sounding opening riff. 'Modern Love' has fabulous jerky and bendy sounding guitar to open before proceeding with pounding drums that continue pretty much throughout the song. Trumpets decorate the chorus, and there you are. Another hit! All of the singles from this album sported expensive and appropriately 80s videos which were almost as memorable as the songs themselves