Songoftheday 12/6/12 - because my love for you would break my heart in two if you should fall into my arms & tremble like a flower....

David Bowie - "Let's Dance"
from the album Let's Dance (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day was the big 80s pop smash from one of modern rock's founding fathers, David Bowie. Born David Jones, he assumed the Bowie moniker to separate himself from the then-huge lead singer of the Monkees when he started out on his solo career in the 60s. After releasing a psychedelic debut album that was a flop in 1967, Bowie went through his first transformation, releasing a record based on a space-age fantasy, "Space Oddity", and as a result scored him a top-5 single in Britain.

From there, Bowie pushed his musical boundaries with three critically acclaimed records, the emo-tinged The Man Who Sold The World in 1970, Hunky Dory with his dip into soul-inflected rock a year later (which gave him his first US hit single, the #41 "Changes"), and the record with the biggest legacy, Ziggy Stardust & His Spiders From Mars in 1972. The latter was a glam-rock concept album masterpiece, highlighted by his second top-10 UK single "Starman". He followed that up with Aladdin Sane, which continued the androgynous "Ziggy"-esque persona and gave his a #2 single with "The Jean Genie".

As the mid-seventies arrived, Bowie moved to the US, and his music changed yet again away from the glam and more into the funk, as made clear by his first American top-40 hit, "Young Americans" (with classic background vocals by Luther Vandross), from the same-titled album. The followup to that song, "Fame", put Bowie squarely in the middle of the cross between rock and disco, and became the singer's first US #1 pop hit in 1975, and also crossed over to the R&B chart, peaking at #21 there. At the same time, "Space Oddity" returned to favor in the UK, topping the pop chart there in the fall.

However, drugs were taking a big toll on both his personal and professional health, and after moving back to Europe in 1976, Bowie then moved to Berlin, where he collaborated with musician/songwriter Brian Eno for a series of albums that placed him in the heart of the experimental rock realm, one that may have made him less viable on American radio, but immensely influential to generations of alternative rockers since.

As the 80s began and the Thin White Duke-referencing New Romantic movement in British music gained full steam, Bowie's music again started not only to gain clearer focus, but also align more with the sound of the day. His 1980 single "Ashes To Ashes" became the singer's second #1 hit in England,
and the following year his record with fellow countrymen Queen, "Under Pressure", racked up his third chart-topper here.

By the time 1983 came, it was time for Bowie's image, music, and popularity to change yet again. Enlisting Chic's disco main man Nile Rodgers to produce a "big pop record", the result being the confident strut of Let's Dance, with its title track, a mix of white-boy funk, lothario swagger and bleating uncertainly about the world. While his persona was now a fashion-foward soul troubadour, in typical Bowie fashion, instead of a big-budget swanky number with beautiful people getting their groove on, he goes to the Australian outback, complete with aboriginal natives telling the story of those red shoes...

The "big pop record" proved itself as such, topping the charts in America, Britain, Canada, and most of Europe (ironically, is stopped at #2 in Australia, where he filmed the video). It also made the top-10 on the US rock chart and top-20 on the R&B list as well, and topped the dance club chart for six weeks (naturally). It succeeded in making Bowie a current artist for the younger generation of the time, and reestablished his reign over the second "British Invasion" taking place with the likes of Culture Club and Duran Duran.

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"Let's Dance" has been covered and sampled by a truckload of people, but some of the more notable ones include Puff Daddy's interpolation of the song as the backing track on his #1 hit "Been Around The World" in 1997...