Album dossier / 1983

Let's Dance

David Bowie · Post-Disco/Dance-Rock/New Wave

Bowie's fifteenth studio album and first for EMI America after leaving RCA, Let's Dance paired him with Chic mastermind Nile Rodgers for an entirely new set of session players -- including a then-unknown 27-year-old Texas blues guitarist named Stevie Ray Vaughan, whom Bowie had spotted at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival. Recorded in just 17 days at New York's Power Station with engineer Bob Clearmountain (who accidentally created the title track's iconic distorted guitar-delay intro while trying to fix a boring guitar line), the album marked the first time Bowie played no instruments on one of his own records, focusing purely on vocals. It became his best-selling studio album, going platinum and giving him his only US and UK #1 single.