Änderung im Line-up bei Nile Rodgers & Chic auf dem Kunst!Rasen Bonn: Mother’s Finest müssen ihren Auftritt aus organisatorischen Gründen leider absagen. Dafür kommen die Boogie Wonderstars dazu. Zusammen mit Kid Creole & The Coconuts bleibt der Abend klar auf Disco, Funk, Soul und Sommer-Party ausgerichtet.
08.07.2026 - 17:30 Uhr Kunst!Rasen Bonn Tickets: https://tickets.kunstrasen-bonn.de/
David Bowie Sings “Let’s Dance”
Listen to this track by pioneering style-shifting era hopper David Bowie. It’s “Let’s Dance”, the title track to his 1983 album of the same name. The new album, his fifteenth, was something of a comeback for Bowie who found himself on top forty radio again after a period of exploring the fringes a bit with the shadowy art rock of 1980’s Scary Monsters. After a brief recording slow down between 1981-82 and a change of record labels from RCA to EMI, Bowie was interested in a more straightforward approach to making music for his next album.
Instead of competing with the New Romantics and post punk bands who were vitally influenced by his past output, he moved to other musical territories entirely. In typical Bowie style, he donned a new look and stage persona to suit the new music he was making; that of a blonde pompadoured R&B frontman inspired by Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. He also sought a more accessible and dance-oriented direction to contrast the layered and more angular approach of his previous few records. The new album title says it all. Or, at least it seems to on first listen.
To help him get the funky and dance-oriented feel he wanted, Bowie co-produced the new album with Chic guitarist, writer, and producer Nile Rodgers. A cast of crack musicians appear on this single, including an up and coming Texan guitar player called Stevie Ray Vaughn whose lead guitar lines on this song show that he had a stunning and unique instrumental voice of his own even this early on. As for Rodgers’ own contributions as an instrumentalist, the co-producer added musical sophistication to this track informed by his instinctual way with irresistibly danceable grooves.
A key element that makes “Let’s Dance” work so well is the A-minor 13th chord featured in the song’s central riff. That small but significant compositional tweak evolved from Bowie’s original straight-ahead A-minor chord. Along with the echoey delay effect, this helped to elevate the song from its folky and funereal original form to being subtly menacing, mysterious, and sexy instead. During this post-disco period, Rodgers steered away from Studio 54-style rhythm parts completely. Instead, he touches on jazz harmony as met with post punk atmosphere. He plays his rhythm guitar part straight not syncopated and lets the delay do most of the work.
The collaboration between co-producers Bowie and Rodgers and engineer Bob Clearmountain resulted in David Bowie’s biggest single. It certainly aided in making its namesake album into his best-selling record. Because of these successes, lot of fans of his Berlin period and of Scary Monsters suggested that Bowie had sold out to the mainstream instead of continuing to push the artistic envelope into edgier territory. To them, his new music was too fit for radio and (worst of all) for casual listeners. Preppies were buying this record! Scandal!
With Grammy nominations and wins and heavy rotation on MTV, it was easy to miss what lies beneath this tune that was a top forty radio staple by 1983. Delving deeper, “Let’s Dance” deals in many of the same areas of concern Bowie explored in his earliest work. One of these is the theme of isolation and the alienation that goes along with it. The lyrical call this tune makes is not about a joyous night out partying or in mindlessly dancing to any old song that happens to be playing on the radio. The dancing described here is a dance of danger.
The moonlight under which that dance happens is not romantic moonlight – it’s serious moonlight. It’s the light in the darkness of the times in which it was more important than ever to gather and to move as a whole society toward something better. “Let’s Dance” is a song about peril. But it’s also one that suggests the importance of facing peril together in whatever way that’s necessary in solidarity; if you say run, I’ll run with you. If you say hide, we’ll hide. As always with Bowie, it’s a fight against the idea that such struggles are those we all must face on our own in isolation.
David Bowie reinvented once again! This promo shot found him in his Serious Moonlight period by 1983, which served as his commercial peak.Bowie was not the first artist to explore the metaphor of dance as struggle, of course. Martha Reeves & The Vandella’s “Dancing in the Streets”, which Bowie would (ill-advisedly?) record later on himself is one high profile example of this from decades before. The lines between a joyful night on the town and taking to the streets in angry protest are pretty blurry in R&B songs of that era. The classic side “Hi-Heel Sneakers” is another example of that and possibly even more of a parallel as reflected in the lyrics. Nearly two decades later, the put on your red shoes line is a subtle nod to what that earlier song suggested.
“Let’s Dance” contains those same elements of danger and struggle that lurk under its celebratory surface. As far as social issues and political climates in which he wrote the song are concerned, not much had changed. With that in mind, “Let’s Dance” is not really a party song. It’s a song of disquiet, tension, and resistance. But it’s also a song about reaching out and rebelling against forces that keep people thinking they struggle on their own. Not much had changed there, either. In fact, this is another example in his work in which Bowie declares “you’re not alone!”, a sentiment he’d put forward to a whole other generation over a decade before.
Regardless of that, a lot of hardcore Bowie fans dismissed “Let’s Dance” as mere radio fodder. It was just too big a song. Even Bowie cut it from his setlists by the Nineties. By then he’d gone in other directions into more experimental areas that a big hit single in his live show wouldn’t allow. Yet for his Glastonbury performance in 2000, it returned again in a re-invented form. Before that, he performed a stripped down version in his appearance at the 1996 Bridge School Benefit. That version revealed it as a song of struggle a bit more than the original pop single version does.
Even if Bowie’s Let’s Dance made him more accessible to a wider audience by deliberately aiming for hits and capturing a new generation of listeners along with it, he was still exploring the core ideas of isolation, struggle, and a search for connection in his songwriting. This period of pop radio success was just another facet of his artistry in a career characterized by near-constant re-invention. But whatever face he wore, and whatever style he applied to his work, Bowie always plotted a steady course into some of the darker regions of the human experience in culturally resonant ways.
To explore more about David Bowie during his Serious Moonlight phase, check out this article about the Let’s Dance record on American Songwriter.
For more about Nile Rodgers’ approach to arranging this song, take a look at this video that has him telling the story of how he adapted the song based on Bowie’s original chord progression.
Enjoy!
#80sMusic #DanceRock #DavidBowie #NileRodgers #radioHits
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Chic is the debut album by Chic, released on Atlantic Records in 1977.
Review by Alex Henderson
When Chic's self-titled debut album came out in 1978, many rock critics gave it very negative reviews and failed to see just how rhythmically and harmonically exciting Chic's blend of funk, soul, and Euro-disco was. But one critic who often gave Chic favorable coverage was Don Waller, who hit the nail on the head when he exalted the band as "an uptown version of Booker T & the MG's." It was a most insightful analogy -- Chic's music was a lot sleeker than Booker T & the MG's raw, instrumental Memphis soul, but like Booker T., the Niles Rodgers/Bernard Edwards team turned out some of the most infectious and influential R&B party grooves of their era..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqGZqHoVKXA&list=PL9B6imbpzJfEYBXIu_UPNgp3kN8ofOgL3&index=1
David Attenborough marks 100th birthday with announcement of next huge BBC series
Dimmi che avevi 15 anni quando uscì "Wild Boys" senza dirmi la tua età. #DuranDuran - Free to Love (feat. #NileRodgers) [Official Music Video] - Invidious https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=W1-2XVQs46U
On Fridays we dance! And today we’re dancing harder because Duran Duran just dropped a new song featuring the legend Nile Rodgers.
Nile and Duran have been creating magic together for over 40 years and we have been lucky enough to see them live.
Check out Free to Love and tell us what you think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1-2XVQs46U
#ItsTheGroove #NewMusicFriday #DuranDuran #NileRodgers #FreeToLove #Music
Song Review: Duran Duran featuring Nile Rodgers – “Free To Love”
In April 2026, Duran Duran released “Free To Love,” a collaboration with Nile Rodgers as a stand-alone single.
http://aeschtunes.com/2026/04/23/song-review-duran-duran-featuring-nile-rodgers-free-to-love/
#Music, #MusicReview, #DuranDuran, #NileRodgers, #2020s, #2020sMusic, #PopMusic, #NewWave, #AeschTunes
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