David Bowie’s Let’s Dance should prove to be the most commercial album he’s made yet, and justify the undisclosed, allegedly enormous sum that EMI, his new record company, paid for him. There must be considerable depression over at RCA, his former company.
Bowie told me that RCA had been unhappy with his last three, impressively experimental albums, Lodger, Low and even Scary Monsters, and that the company had offered to get him a flat in Philadelphia in the hope that he’d record another album like Young Americans. Instead, he’s made an even more fashion-conscious move: not back to a black Philly sound but to a contemporary black New York funk style, with help from his co-producer, Chic’s Nile Rodgers.
