David Bowie: Let's Dance

Over 32 years ago, the number one song on the UK singles chart was a songwriting collaboration between David Bowie and a very fancy gentleman that featured a blistering guitar solo by a guy named Stevie Ray. "Let's Dance" was the title track of Bowie's debut album for EMI Records, an album originally intended to be produced by longtime Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, who found that he was replaced on the project a bit later than he probably should have been. (When Visconti checked with Bowie's assistant about the status of the project, he got the bad news that Rodgers and Bowie had already been working together for two weeks, that it was working out, and that his services wouldn't be needed after all. Ouch.) Still, the end result was certainly the uber-commercial affair EMI had hoped for when they reportedly plunked down $17.5 million for Bowie's services to their label: Let's Dance topped the charts in the UK, Australia and a number of other European countries, and when it reached #4 in the U.S., it put Bowie in the Top 5 of the Billboard Top 200 chart for the first time since 1976's Station to Station. As for the single, "Let's Dance" managed to do something that no Bowie single had done before and never did again: it topped both the UK and US singles charts. She also introduced a lot of people to the guitar artistry - or guitar playing, if you will (but we know you don't, and we don't blame you) - of Stevie Ray Vaughn, whose paths crossed with Bowie's after the guitarist performed at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival and - to use Bowie's own words - "completely blew away" the Thin White Duke. The result was Vaughn performing the song "Let's Dance," just in case you've always wondered who plays the solo at the end of the song. Now that you know, you should listen to the song again and wonder why you didn't figure it out sooner.