#ThrowbackThursday – We go back to 1983 when David Bowie was Nº1 in the US and the UK with the title track from the Nile Rodgers produced album Let’s Dance. The song was the first single to be lifted from the album and became Bowie’s biggest-selling hit. The track also went to Nº1 in 7 other countries. This was Bowie’s 4th UK Nº1 featuring blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who played lead guitar.
Let’s Dance was Bowie’s only transatlantic Nº1 and it’s not hard to understand why. The upbeat song has mass appeal and Bowie himself described it as “positive, emotional and uplifting.” “I tried to produce something that was warmer and more humanistic than anything I’ve done for a long time. Less emphasis on the nihilistic kind of statement.”
The music video was filmed on location in Australia and directed by David Mallet and Bowie. Locations included in the video was a bar in Carinda in New South Wales and the Warrumbungle National Park near Coonabarabran. It featured Bowie playing with his band while impassively watching an Aboriginal couple’s struggles against metaphors of Western cultural imperialism. The red shoes mentioned in the song’s lyrics appear in several contexts. Bowie described this video (and the video for his subsequent single, “China Girl”) as “very simple, very direct” statements against racism and oppression.
C5 users you will find this music video in Playlists >> Throwback Sessions.
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