David Bowie - Let's Dance (1983) [1985, Reissue] {Club Edition}

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David Bowie - Let's Dance (1983) [1985, Reissue] {Club Edition}

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David Bowie - Let's Dance (1983) [1985, Reissue] {Club Edition}

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"Let's Dance" is the 15th studio album by English musician 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 #1 in the UK, US and various other countries, as well as "Modern Love" and "China Girl", which both reached #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 #1 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 was 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 were 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.

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David Bowie - Let's Dance (1983) [1985, Reissue] {Club Edition}

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After summing up his maverick tendencies on Scary Monsters, David Bowie aimed for the mainstream with Let's Dance. Hiring Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers as a co-producer, Bowie created a stylish, synthesized post-disco dance music that was equally informed by classic soul and the emerging new romantic subgenre of new wave, which was ironically heavily inspired by Bowie himself. Let's Dance comes tearing out of the gate, propulsed by the skittering "Modern Love," the seductively menacing "China Girl," and the brittle funk of the title track. All three songs became international hits, and for good reason 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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David Bowie - Let's Dance (1983) [1985, Reissue] {Club Edition}

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David Bowie - Let's Dance (1983) [1985, Reissue] {Club Edition}

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