Released
forty years ago today, on April 14th, 1983, is David Bowie’s 15th
studio album, Let’s Dance. While it set the commercial high water mark
of his career, becoming his all time best selling album, it also painted
him into a creative corner, boxing him into a commercial sound which
drove down the quality of his output throughout the remainder of the
decade.
Throughout the latter half of the 1970s, Bowie had been
pursuing a distinctly avant-garde tinged approach to pop music,
exploring darker themes and sonic experimentation with sales taking a
backseat to artistic expression. After the success of his Ziggy
Stardust period, veering into these more obscure directions sometimes
meant sacrificing commercial appeal. However, his last album on this
trajectory, 1980’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) found him coming to
a near perfect balance between experimentation and commercial
viability.
Following the completion of Scary Monsters, Bowie
spent some time pursuing acting on both stage and screen, performing in
The Elephant Man and Christian F., respectively. The assassination of
John Lennon in December of 1980, however, put Bowie into shock and he
cancelled an upcoming tour to support Scary Monsters, retreating to
Switzerland where he became something of a recluse. Musically, he was
not so productive, but still worked with Giorgio Moroder for the Cat
People soundtrack and collaborated with Queen for the single, Under
Pressure. He also appeared in the films, The Hunger and Merry Christmas,
Mr. Lawrence, both released in 1983.
Scary Monsters also marked
the end of his relationship with RCA records, whom he felt had failed
to fully support his recent work, instead exploiting only his back
catalogue. This took him to EMI records and, looking to have a fresh
start while yet again reinvent himself, he set up shop in NYC and chose
Chic main-man, Nile Rogers, as producer for his next album. This was a
decision which would lead to a sever rift between Bowie and producer
Tony Visconti, who had worked on Bowie's previous four albums. Bowie
neglected to inform Visconti of the producer change and Tony ended up
finding out second hand, to which he took deep offense. While the two
would ultimately end up working together again, it would not be until 20
years later for 2002’s Heathen. Bowie’s intent was to go in a
completely new direction with an entirely different collection of
musicians and focus on the commercial viability of the album. All the
regulars from the previous albums were set aside and a fresh group of
players were brought in. For this album, Bowie also refrained from
contributing as a musician himself, instead opting to focus solely on
being a vocalist.
Nile Rogers had made a major name for himself
with Chic and by producing a string of dance classics for the likes of
Diana Ross & Sister Sledge. This prowess with a groove meant that
he was uniquely qualified to put Bowie’s music onto the dance floor and
the title track for the album became proof of that skill. The song,
Let’s Dance, was released as a single and immediately swept the club
scene. I personally recall it being in constant rotation in every type
of setting, from mainstream clubs to the most underground warehouse
after-hours industrial-goth freak scene. It joined a host of club hits
which were rehabilitating the dance floors of the day after the backlash
of the “death to disco” movement, which capped off the previous decade.
Songs like Let’s Dance, Blue Monday by New Order & Perfect by The
The became clarion calls to loose booties on both sides of the Atlantic,
announcing that it was okay to cut a rug again.
Recording of
the album was done at the Power Station in NYC, over three weeks in
December of 1982. Since recording Scary Monsters, Bowie had become
obsessed with R&B music from the ‘50s & ’60s and artists like
James Brown, Buddy Guy and Albert King. Nile used that interest as a
guide to the stylistic structure of Let’s Dance. When Bowie initially
played him an acoustic version of the title song, he knew it wasn’t a
dance song, but he was able to adapt the arrangement with elements of
‘50s & ’60s music to mutate it into something with a groove.
The
idea to recruit Stevie Ray Vaughn came from Bowie after spotting him at
the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Rogers was initially
ambivalent about Vaughn, classifying him as too blues-centric for the
funkier R&B sound he was crafting, but Bowie was insistent that he
had “something”. Vaughn was unknown and hadn’t released his first album
yet, but Bowie won out in the end and Stevie contributed guitar solo
parts on eight of the album’s cuts. While the album blushed against
some of the “new wave” influences of Bowie's so-called “Berlin era”, the
mainstream soul & R&B influences brought it far more in line
with the feel of Young Americans, which was also heavily influenced by
black American music.
At the time of its release, it became an
instant smash, topping album charts in numerous countries around the
globe. All four of the album’s singles were also significant hits, with
music videos for Let’s Dance and China Girl (a cover of an Iggy Pop
song from the Bowie produced album, The Idiot) getting heavy rotation on
the still fledgling MTV music channel. The massive Serious Moonlight
Tour, which launched to promote the album, managed to secure Bowie’s
position as one of the biggest pop stars of the day, a triumphant career
pinnacle after a decade of weaving in and out of public favor. As
previously stated, that commercial success became a double edged sword
as its rewards came at the cost of creative freedom, with Bowie feeling
obligated to maintain that stature while his artistic integrity suffered
with each successive release during the ‘80s.
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". 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". Robert Christgau felt that it had a "perfunctory
professional surface", and that other than the "interesting" Modern
Love, Let's Dance was "pleasantly pointless". Steve Bush of Smash Hits
found it overall dull and 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".
Yet in terms of its
legacy, it stands as the crescendo of one of the most astounding
creative runs any artist has ever achieved. With 14 years of artistic
genius backing it up, it should more properly be seen as a much deserved
victory lap. But it did essentially bookend Bowie’s career relevance
as the last significant release of his career, at least until his
re-emergence from semi-retirement in 2013 with The Next Day, his
penultimate album before his death in 2016. The years between Let’s
Dance and The Next Day, while not entirely bereft of notable product,
were still lacking in both the sense of Bowie being an artistic
visionary working the cutting edge of the culture or a commercial force
to be reckoned with.
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