Unlike many of his 70s peers, David Bowie had little trouble adjusting to the 1980s. After all, his career was built upon media-image manipulation entering a decade that, with the advent of MTV, would become obsessed with it. But instead of trying to out-glam the growing legions of synth-pop insurgents copping his old alien/androgyne persona, David Bowie's defining image in this era was to just be David Bowie: a debonair pop idol with pin-up-worthy blond hair, designer suits, movie-star ambitions, and a camera-ready smile that shone brighter than a paparazzi pit. But if the first few years of the 80s saw Bowie score his biggest hits, the latter half found him in danger of losing his relevancy, and faced with the impossibility of sustaining his early, carefully cultivated mystique and vanguard reputation. You can chart this wayward path by his choice of side men: In 1980 his guitarist of choice was Robert Fripp; by 1987 it was Peter Frampton.
This third installment of the Best of David Bowie budget-comp series may begin at a year with a nice, round, inaugural number, but with respect to Bowie's discography, 1980 is a somewhat arbitrary entry point. Compared to what followed, the selections from his 1980 signature work Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) feel like the product of another era (not to mention another record company-- it was his last album for RCA before jumping to Virgin). The android funk of "Fashion", the Berlin-bound sleaze of "Scary Monsters", and the unnerving sing-along "Up the Hill Backwards" feel like the closing acts of a Teutonic-soul cycle that began with 1976's Station to Station, while the paranoid "Ashes to Ashes" sends the post-hippie/sci-fi idealism of Bowie's glam heyday crashing down to earth. As the ensuing decades have shown, these songs also marked the last time Bowie's pop and avant-garde instincts were so perfectly in sync.
Following his triumphant Queen collaboration "Under Pressure"-- a song so awesome, not even Vanilla Ice could kill it-- the 80s would begin in earnest for Bowie with Let's Dance, whose authoritative title track aptly opens this loosely chronological compilation. For an album so inextricably linked to the year 1983, its MTV-saturated singles hardly bear the musty scent of retro artifacts: On his 2002 Heathen tour, Bowie performed a veritable live mash-up of "Modern Love", grafting the song's melody onto the galloping guitar groove of the Strokes' "Someday", perhaps as a sly nod to the New York newbies' copying skills, but also to remind us of the song's ageless bounce. Like Bowie's production work on Raw Power 10 years earlier, the Let's Dance redux of his 1977 Iggy Pop co-write "China Girl" was a goodwill gesture to boost the earning potential of his down-and-out buddy, but Bowie's more dignified performance has surpassed Iggy's original as the definitive take (although its bare-ass video may have given it an unfair advantage). Amid the hair-raising "Twist and Shout" teases of "Let's Dance", you almost overlook the uncanny contrast between the song's alluring, horny-funk accents and Bowie's leering, almost dread-ridden delivery.
The enduring appeal of Let's Dance is all the more remarkable when placed next to the poorly dated quality of Bowie's remaining 80s output. On previous Best of David Bowie installments, the obvious hits were supplemented by well-curated album tracks, but the paucity of exemplary material from 1984's Tonight (a.k.a. Let's Dance Some More) and 1987's Never Let Me Down don't provide much of an opportunity for reassessment: With its faux-steel-drum refrain and synth-polished easy-rock groove, Tonight's "Loving the Alien" is hardly the epic its seven-minute run time suggests, while Never Let Me Down's "Day-In Day-Out" captured Bowie in the unfortunate position of playing catch-up to Duran Duran three years too late. Additionally, the compilation is padded with Bowie's middling soundtrack contributions of the era, some of which hold up on the strength of the songwriting (the proto-Pulp soul of "Absolute Beginners", for instance), but several of which can't shake off their oh-so-80s accoutrement (the proto-Enigma new-age gothisms of "This Is Not America" from The Falcon and the Snowman, or the goofy ersatz gospel of Labyrinth's "Underground"). But hey, things could be worse-- thanks to this compilation's 1987 cut-off date, we're spared the task of reconsidering Tin Machine.
