David Bowie’s Let’s Dance. My first album by him. Great place to start.

are you trying to say everything post LD is worthless ?

 

Although I liked Bowie in the 70s I never had any vinyl of his. My first David Bowie purchase was Changes, the 1990 compilation CD, I got in 1990.

 

Love the album, even though I recognize its faults (particularly on Side 2..."Shake It" has to be his worst album closer of all-time). But something should be said for the fact that without LD's success, Bowie may have faded into complete obscurity. Its massive popularity basically gave him carte-blanche for whatever he wanted to do in the future, as well as secured his and his family's finances after nearly two decades of struggling in that regard, thanks in no small part to Tony DeFries. Without LD, we don't get 1. Outside, Heathen, Blackstar, etc...

 

Let's Dance was my first Bowie album when it came out. I was only 12 at the time and getting into music via TOTP and listening to local radio.

While it is not the most perfect Bowie album out there, it is nevertheless one I still enjoy from start to finish. Yes even with that closing track which just seems to go nowhere like a sail boat adrift on the sea. As for the rest of Side 2, you begin to understand what the term album tracks really mean. This is were the real gold of the album is found. Out of all the tracks on the album, Ricochet is my favourite but those first three songs on side 2 are killer tracks.

I didn't follow Bowie as much on future releases, bought the Absolute Beginners single, the ChangesBowie compilation and jumped back onboard from the Black Tie White Noise release onwards, then checking out the rest of his back catalogue. I'm not sure that would have happened without Let's Dance.

 

Adjusted for inflation, £4.25 is about £15 today. I live on the other side of the world, so I'm not sure if that's cheap or not?

I love Let's Dance. I can't remember if it was my first Bowie album or if I owned ChangesOne first. Either way, I know I bought Let's Dance in 1984 after the three big singles had been released. They've all been played to death but I still love them (and I only listen to the longer album versions — the single edits drive me crazy). 'Without You' and 'Criminal World' are other highlights. I know people love the Moroder version of 'Cat People' but I much prefer the re-recording. I can live without 'Ricochet' and 'Shake It', although neither of them are terrible.

I also love Tonight, which I know is a deeply unpopular opinion. It was my third Bowie album and there's a pop on the record before 'Don't Look Down' because I used to lift the needle constantly to replay 'Loving the Alien'. I really lost myself in that song.

 

I don't think that it has much to do with age as it does with how much one likes to dance. The early albums often suck the life out of the listener.

 

I don’t mind Tonight. It was only the second Bowie LP I bought so I wasn’t sure what to expect anyway.

There’s enough on it to make me continue to play it. Blue Jean was a great lead single. Loving The Alien is obviously a highlight. Tonight with Tina is a letdown considering how huge she was starting to become at this point. Don’t Look Back and Neighbourhood Threat are good.

The reviews here weren’t raves. Then again, neither were the ones for Let’s Dance! It didn’t help that Bowie himself threw Tonight under the bus about a fortnight after it came out.

 

Tonight was an absolute tu** and 37 years has not clouded my judgment. I didn’t buy it. I nicked a friend’s copy. His best work in that period was in films. The Blue Jean longform, Absolute Beginners, even the codpiecefest that was Babyrinth. But Tonight sucked utter balls.

 

Lets Dance (See post #70)

 

Wood blocks by Sammy Figueroa (See post #70)

 

See post #70

 

David Bowie.

Oh ...

Tim

 

Nothing "nostalgic" about "Let's Dance" for me. Most 80's music I do not care for, and "The Man Who Sold The World" is my favorite
Bowie album, which is MUCH different than "Lets Dance". - I guess I like "Lets Dance" the same way I like Steely Dan, it's near perfection.

 

Saw it when it was new.

Now that Rick Beato allows commercials to interrupt his videos I no longer watch him. Sometimes it's three commercials with one video, he'll find out if his followers want that.

 

It's a well produced album. But then we know the history of that, and the people behind it. Let's Dance was a calculated effort, and it totally worked for what was wanted. It just left some fans confused. People like me. I may well play it later, hoping it'll one day win me over. Tonight has! But I really really dislike China Girl - the lyrics make my toes curl. And Modern Love is horrific. It's going to take me a while.

 

Ya, those are my least favorite songs from the album, but I make Playlists, and they are not there.
Not sure how many albums I like all the way through. Not many...

 

My second favourite Bowie's album.

First: Never Let Me Down

80s Bowie is top

 

I knew what you were talking about. Maybe because I, too, have mostly listened to the album on vinyl…

 

Come on, “Modern Love” is great! I’m not sure why some people insist on hating fun…

I get the cringe around “China Girl”… but I love that song. Iggy’s is better, but this one has Stevie Ray Vaughan, so I’m still into it.

 

i would begin and end with hunky dory and ziggy stardust. stellar and timeless. but that's just me.

 

Lot of folks who don't like Stevie Ray Vaughan on this thread I guess. Maybe it's too cold in Berlin to dance these days.... Bowie seemed to want to imitate Marc Bolan (he did a good job of it!) and Bowie's use of make-up was novel. It looks like KISS paid attention.

 

Let's Dance is, by far, David Bowie's best album of his entire career.

It is not even close.

10/10.

 

Yeah I'll go for that! I still bring it on periodically. And still like all the songs-"Ricochet" is the one I most get a hankering for but it's all great.

 

Oh I dunno-I considered myself a serious Bowie fan since a pretty small kid, and liked it. By that point Bowie was established as a chameleon so for me it was just the latest turn (all the way to the weird but wonderful ★ Jeez, 25 albums, what a catalog!) OTOH I can well imagine some fans never moving past The Spiders From Mars.

 

My entry to David Bowie was ChangesOneBowie and it was a real eye-opener. This was around 1978 so the first "new" Bowie LPs for me were Lodger and Scary Monsters. Lodger was a little impenetrable at the time but Scary Monsters blew my mind, a dense dizzying mix of pop, hard rock, prog, goth, electronic dance music and sheer atonal noise (in part personified by Robert Fripp's razor blade guitar). The jewel in this thorny crown was Ashes To Ashes, a pop song like nothing I'd ever heard before accompanied by a truly disturbing and abstract video clip. Pretty heady stuff for the mind of a 12 year old to absorb.

Scary Monsters still holds up remarkably well. Despite Bowie's embrace of the current technology of the time, it doesn't sound dated and retains its unsettling edge and accessibility without devolving into self-parody like many of Bowie's contemporaries. It's the culmination of everything he strove for in the 1970s, all of his "phases" rolled into one plus the undefined X factor pushing him into the future.

With hindsight it's easy to see that nearly any direction Bowie took from this artistic pinnacle would a be a disappointment.

Let's Dance was indeed a disappointment but it provided Bowie with something his career had been conspicuously short on: hit singles in the United States. Despite his many chart successes in England and elsewhere, Bowie only had three real hits in America: Space Oddity (#15 in 1969), Fame (#1 in 1975) and Golden Years (#10 in 1976). That's all.

Bowie wanted it bad enough and he got it. He realized the key to success in 1983 MTV America was to beat bands like Duran Duran at their own game and produce slick mindless soulless dance music for white people. Bowie of course used the best: producer Nile Rodgers (soon to work his magic for other white artists like Madonna, Mick Jagger, Duran Duran and the B-52s) and young hotshot guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, whose solos are undoubtedly the high point of the Let's Dance LP.

As pure entertainment Let's Dance is unparalleled. Artistically it's in the toilet. China Girl (US #10) is neat but Iggy's is more fun. Modern Love (US #14) has a great intro and a bouncy groove (and a bari sax solo). Stevie Ray plays some cool licks in the title song (US #1) but the lyrics are so stupid that Frank Zappa easily skewered them in Be In My Video. Cat People is pretty good (Stevie Ray again) but the soundtrack version from 1982 is better. After those four tracks what else does this album have to recommend it?