Let's Dance 

David Bowie: Let's Dance

If there was ever a feelgood David Bowie album, then 1983's Let's Dance was it. It had some cool, unusual music videos and sold millions but many consider that it hasn't really aged well.

Me? I'm of two minds, simply because I look at it in a very different way from most people. I'm something of an amateur pop historian and I feel that in order to understand Let's Dance, you have  analyse the unusual pairing of producer Nile Roger's funk with then-virtually unknown blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn.

At the time, Nile Roger's band Chic, were the most exciting force in black music. He and fellow Chic member Gordon Edwards had written and produced massive crossover pop hits for:

• Sister Sledge We Are Family
• Diana Ross    Upside Down, I'm Coming out, My Old Piano
• Carly Simon  Why 

...and Bowie wanted in on the action. However, those acts basically just fronted Chic, whereas Bowie took some of Chic (Rogers and drummer Tony Thompson) and utilised their incredible grasp of  what was then cutting edge pop, soul and funk and made it his very own.

Bowie: "...A number of people have said that album has in spirit the same feeling as the Young Americans album. I would agree but I think the balance has changed somewhat. On the Young Americans, I was so overwhelmed by the Philadelphia sound... that I was writing songs specifically to point out the rhythm & blues and soul elements....This time around in Let's Dance, I thinks it's far more a case of my working with rhythm & blues to enhance the songs themselves. The approach is kind of the other way around from that of the Young Americans period..." NY rock.com

Stevie Ray Vaughn was important because his very white sense of the black man's blues counterpointed Chic's black groove and the clash of cultures was what made the album really interesting. Let's Dance was funky and bluesy, almost "up", a far cry from the paranoia of his previous effort, Scary Monsters. 

Let's Dance, then, was built around four singles, one of which had already been a hit in early 1982, the theme song to the very successful movie Cat People, starring Nastassia Kinski. It had a Bowie lyric added to music by Giorgio Moroder, who composed the rest of the soundtrack. 

           Cat People

So, Bowie headed into the studio in December '82 having done a lot of thinking after the murder of John Lennon in 1980.

"...a whole reason for being a singer and songwriter seemed to be removed from me. It was almost like a warning. It was saying: we've got to do something about our situation on Earth..." Rolling Stone via Bowie Down Under 

He wanted to do something positive and if that also happened to make a bucketload of cash, well, so be it. The first single off the album was the title track, very radio-friendly and un-Bowie-like with a stop-start statement of romanticism and fear, the two poles of Lust.

"...Let's dance
Put on your red shoes and dance the blues
Let's dance
To the song they're playin' on the radio...

"...Let's dance
For fear your grace should fall
Let's dance
For fear tonight is all

Let's sway
You could look into my eyes
Let's sway
Under the moonlight, this serious moonlight..."

                          Let's Dance

"...The flawless title track is ultimate Nile Rogers: a serious bassline, funky guitar and a slammin' groove set to Bowie's distinguished voice..." Amazon reviewer the Groove

However, in an incredible Bowie mind-warp, the music video was transported to sunny Australia to make an anti-racism statement. Pick up all the goss from the wonderful Bowie Down Under article(via Rolling Stone)

David Bowie: Let's Dance

The second single was China Girl (written with Iggy Pop) which Bowie lifted from the mostly-forgotten 1977 album that he had written with friend, Iggy Pop, The Idiot (see the end of my review for Low). 

Iggy's China Girl is about his heroin addiction but Bowie reworked it with considerable chutzpah to, once more, become a wonderfully "up" anti-racist pop song, even featuring some tacky bamboo tea-house keyboards to set up the chop suey flavor.

As with Let's Dance, the music video was shot in Australia (including Melbourne's Chinatown) and featured New Zealand actress, Geeling Ng.  Apparently Bowie and Ms. Ng were subsequently an "item" for several years, which is pretty anti-racist, if you ask me! While Iggy's original was sung "straight", Bowie's version is sung with some ambivalence, especially the problematic "fascist" section...  

"...I stumble into town just like a sacred cow
Visions of swastikas in my head
Plans for everyone
Its in the white of my eyes

My little china girl
You shouldn't mess with me
I'll ruin everything you are
I'll give you television
I'll give you eyes of blue
I'll give you men who want to rule the world

And when I get excited
My little china girl says
Oh baby just you shut your mouth..."

           China Girl

...which the music video infers is healed by her charms, i.e. Love beats Fascism, anyday.

The album, if you remember, started with the stellar Modern Love...

"...Modern Love (started) the album...(and)...was Bowie's catchiest composition in years, maybe ever, soaring with a danceable energy that made it absolutely undeniable..." Amazon reviewer Thomas D. Ryan

...a strident anti-marriage song, which, in its setting, somehow came across as fun and romantic. It utilised a title from a song that's the musical, My Fair Lady, called Get Me To The Church On Time about one of the characters getting married, who doesn't really want to.  

"...Never gonna fall for  Modern Love
Walks beside me             Modern Love
Walks on by                     Modern Love
Gets me to the               Church on Time