10 Overrated Rock Albums Of The 80s

David Bowie’s astonishing record of classic album after classic album came to a halt with his 1983 release. Let’s Dance is by no means a dud, but it’s also not a great, and issues a stark warning for Bowie’s career going forward: for the first time, he wasn’t setting trends but chasing them.

Feeling in need of a career refresh, Bowie hired Chic’s Nile Rogers to assist with production. When it works, it really works. “Modern Love” is an all time great, perhaps the most purely joyous song in Bowie’s arsenal and a guaranteed floor filler. Other times, though, he gets bogged down in long jams that can’t help feeling like filler.

The album version of the title track is seven minutes long, unnecessarily, and his cut of “China Girl”, a song written with Iggy Pop, is not a patch on the former Stooge’s version. “Cat People” is a hugely enjoyable camp cut, though the clearest example of Bowie jumping on a wave, here icy synth rock.

It’d be unfair to expect Bowie to change the game every single time, though he set himself up by spending the ‘70s doing precisely that. Let’s Dance is a good album, but by far his weakest for 13 years. Luckily (for this album’s rep, not Bowie’s career), there was much worse to come.