{"id":40909,"date":"2008-05-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/lets-dance-2\/"},"modified":"2008-05-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-20T00:00:00","slug":"lets-dance-2","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/lets-dance-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s Dance<\/i> is a watershed release in David Bowie’s long career for a number of reasons. It’s the first time that he didn’t bother to include any kind of arty pretensions in the music and the result is a standard issue mainstream dance pop album. It was also his most commercially successful album by far, with a trio of hit singles that propelled him to \u201880s superstardom. On the image front, he abandoned his freaky looks of the past in favor of a clean cut, preppy look, complete with button shirts and blazers and all that sort of bullshit. Rock stars should not look like accountants. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The music sounds basically like what you’d get if Bowie<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> were fronting Duran Duran \u2013 keyboards and synths next to flangey guitars and bubbly bass riffs. It\u2019s not really a huge surprise since his last album, Scary Monsters<\/i>, already hinted at a more accessible direction, and the choice of using \u201880s funk-lite master producer Nile Rodgers cements this. <\/p>\n

There isn’t a hint of spontaneity or any kind of rock ‘n roll attitude to be found here. This is an older, increasingly boring David Bowie moving into a less rebellious form of music. Honestly, I can’t blame him for going the pop route. He’d been at it for 20 years by then, and I’m certain he wanted to ensure himself a generous amount of retirement money because in the music business you never can predict when your career will be over. Let\u2019s Dance<\/i> was a highly successful attempt to capture a younger, possibly female, audience with its calculated brand of trendy dance pop.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Bowie\u2019s vocal performance is superb throughout, but the music itself sounds far more dated than on older albums because of the production techniques that were typical of mainstream records of the time, such as the hugely reverbed drum sound and prominent keyboards. Now, when that is in the form of superbly written songs, of which there are six on here, then it\u2019s not an issue beyond perhaps a slight chuckle, but when it’s not (the remaining filler tracks), then it tends to amplify the failings rather more dramatically than it normally might. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The album starts off very promisingly indeed, with the three huge hits back to back: “Modern Love,” an intriguing, up-tempo ass shaker with a \u201860s Motown influence; “China Girl,” written originally by Bowie and Iggy Pop for the latter\u2019s 1977 solo debut, complete with a stereotypically Oriental sounding melody; and “Let’s Dance,” a slower space funk tune with a very distinctive bass line. Also of note are the sentimental \u201cWithout You\u201d and the moodier, nocturnal goth pop of the cover \u201cCriminal World.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, like so many pop albums based around a handful of inspired singles, there is filler to be found. \u201cRicochet\u201d is utterly bland and forgettable, and \u201cShake It\u201d sounds like a mid \u201880s Janet Jackson throwaway, although “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” fares a lot better with its dark, eerie vibe. .<\/p>\n

While Let\u2019s Dance<\/i> certainly contains a batch of well written, refined, memorable songs that were massive successes for him, it also represents the beginning of Bowie<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> losing his artistic identity. Reduced to copying the very bands he himself influenced, this album finds Bowie<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> in the unfamiliar position of no longer being a musical innovator for the first time, and many fans of his earlier work choose to ignore this phase of his career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":27558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5671],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40909","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-david-bowie","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40909"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}