Great Bowie song or no? Obviously it doesn’t match up with Diamond Dogs, but as a post-Bowie Bowie song, it’s really great, Isn’t that Stevie Ray on the outtro?
I really like it. It’s one of my favorites of his, and despite its relatively heavy radio airplay I’ll always listen to it. I admit I don’t like much of Bowie’s early stuff.
Too be clear: I love David Bowie.
I do, however, have a nit to pick with this song: it’s name is “Let’s Dance” but you can’t really dance to it.
Frosts my flakes a bit. Modern Love off the same album is so much easier to dance to - I can get my 80’s White Guy bob n’ kick dance groove on 
As a teenager I discovered through MTV that this Bowie dude from the radio had something that connected with me, but I couldn’t identify it. Years later I figured it out. It was that particular record, and that particular guest guitarist- Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Ugh. I like Bowie, but *Let’s Dance *is dour, unpleasant early-80’s synth pop.
This.
Yep.
Until I looked it up after starting this thread, I wasn’t 100% sure that was SRV on the solo, but I was almost certain. It’s so amazing to me that guitarists, their fingers and their rigs have “voices” that you immediately recognize. Nobody else sounds quite like that on the guitar.
Listen again to the guitars, especially the solo in China Girl. Even the very beginning of Modern Love. I’ve always wonderd about that song, and if it ever had a guitar solo instead of a sax solo.
Nope. 
It’s also interesting to note that so many guitar players sound the same, especially within their genres.
Here’s a short list of guitarists I can readily identify:
Slash
David Gilmour
Dimebag
Keith Richards
Eddie Van Halen
Yngwie Malmsteen
Steve Vai
Stevie Ray
Hendrix
Clapton
Satriani
Angus Young
Eric Johnson
Jimmy Page
I’m running out of ideas here…
Richard Thompson… Jorma Kaukonen…Ry Cooder…Tom Verlaine…Jeff Beck…
… Mark Knopfler…
…Brian May…
Nile Rodgers
Jimmy “Chank” Nolen of James Brown’s band.
Michael Hedges
Joe Pass
So many. The whole point to the instrument is to find your own voice.
Speaking of Nile Rodgers, this thread comes full circle. Here’s an unpolished studio outtake of Let’s Dance.
Bowie himself didn’t like his music of that time. He referred to them as his “Phil Collins years”, where he tried to gain a new mainstream audience.
First time I heard it, I got chills down my spine and hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Time has settled it down, but only a little. LOVE IT.
I have mixed feelings about the song. I can remember my youthful, MTV-gorging self rolling my eyes and reaching to change the channel when the video came on for what had to be the hundredth time that day. On the other hand, I’ve gotten to the age where almost anything that transports me back to those simpler times for a healthy dose of nostalgia is fairly welcome. It’s not a bad song, I guess. But it’s not among the handful of David Bowie songs that I have added to my collection, and I don’t imagine that’s particularly likely to change.
Tell that to the 5 000 people around me dancing to it when Chic played it (in an arrangement that, other than the voice, was pretty much indistinguishable from the original) at a festival I was at! I’ve literally never seen so many people dancing (as opposed to just standing watching) to a set as that one.
It’s always a floor filler at any disco I’ve been to, irrespective of what other tastes the dancers might have.