With the assistance of engineer Bob Clearmountain, Rodgers transformed the song from its folk rock origins to a dance number through studio effects and new musicians Bowie had yet to work with.

Embracing rock, funk, dance, new wave and post-disco, the full-length seven-minute track features numerous solos, including trumpet, saxophone, guitar and percussion.

Several music elements, from the bassline and the breakdown, were based on Rodgers' work with Chic, while the rising vocal intros were taken from the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout".

The song's music video, filmed in Australia, provided commentary on the treatment of Aboriginal Australians, using the red shoes from a line to symbolise their abuse.

In 1982, David Bowie left his longtime label RCA Records, having grown increasingly unsatisfied with them, and signed a new contract with EMI for a reported $17 million.

[2] Around autumn, Bowie met Nile Rodgers of the American band Chic in the after-hours New York nightclub Continental, where the two developed a rapport over industry acquaintances and shared musical interests;[3] he eventually asked him to produce his next record.

[16] Rodgers replaced Bowie's regular Carlos Alomar on rhythm guitar and recruited his Chic collaborators: keyboardist Robert Sabino, percussionist Sammy Figueroa and backing vocalists Frank and George Simms.

Also hired were drummer Omar Hakim, bassist Carmine Rojas, trumpeter Mac Gollehon, vocalist David Spinner and saxophonists Stan Harrison, Robert Aaron and Steve Elson.

"[2] Hakim's snare drum was treated with gated reverb, a sound developed by engineers like Clearmountain and Hugh Padgham at the Power Station and London's Townhouse Studios, respectively, wherein a microphone would be hooked up on the snare head to record the initial impact and rig ambient microphones equipped with noise gates above the kit for extra reverb.

"[17] Contributing additional guitar overdubs towards the end of the sessions was Stevie Ray Vaughan, a then-unknown 28-year-old Texas blues guitarist, whom Bowie hired after seeing him play at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival.

"[4] Over seven minutes in length, O'Leary states that "Let's Dance" consists of a series of "set pieces", featuring individual solos by trumpet, guitar, percussion and saxophone.

"[6] Bowie, who labelled the song "a postmodern homage to the Isley Brothers' 'Twist and Shout'",[4] cited Rodgers as the reason for its "incredible commercial appeal".

[18] O'Leary describes the song as "a sampler of American music" and "a catalog in jump-cuts", displaying the likes of electric blues, funk, Hollywood jazz, R&B, rock 'n' roll [and] Latin".

[6] Instrumentally, the final bassline, which biographer Nicholas Pegg considers "pure Chic",[7] boasts two interspersing hooks of "a four-note stepwise descent and a five-note pattern that falls a step or holds the same note".

[2] However, Pegg finds a possible inspiration to be Aleister Crowley's 1923 composition "Lyric of Love to Leah", which features lines related to dancing in the moonlight with a lover.

"[27] EMI America issued "Let's Dance" as the lead single from the album on 14 March 1983,[e] backed by a remake of "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)".

Writing for NME, Charles Shaar Murray enjoyed Elson's bass and Vaughan on guitar and praised Bowie's vocal performance for reaching "new heights".

[38] Debra Rae Cohen of The New York Times also commended the song's use of different R&B rhythms to create "a larger-than-life dance music that's almost timeless in its appeal, reminiscent of an encyclopedia of sources, yet never – for more than an instant, anyway – completely familiar".

[39] A Billboard writer said, "[Nile] Rodgers' predictable arrangement sets up the rules [of the dance-funk genre], while Bowie's melodic structure and delivery methodically break them.

[2] In the video, which has little to do with the song itself, the Aboriginal couple visit an art gallery, eat a meal, work in a factory, clean for a white family and walk with friends barefoot in the outback.

The bar guests were actual Carinda residents and were unaware of who Bowie was or that a music video was being filmed; their reactions towards the dancing couple were genuine.

[44] In his book Strange Fascination, Buckley describes the video as "an attempt to articulate the clash of interests between white consumer capitalism and the Aboriginal traditions it displaced".

[h] Additionally, the author says that a female factory boss wearing the outfit suggests "capitalistic domination" and the abuse of Aboriginals and general labour.

[2] Bowie also appears at one point as a corporate manager, which Pegg believes suggests "an implicit anxiety about his own role as a global rock star, the ultimate cultural colonist".

[45] A short documentary about the video's making, directed by Rubika Shah and Ed Gibbs and titled Let's Dance: Bowie Down Under, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2015.

Nevertheless, "Let's Dance" made a one-off appearance at the Bridge School Benefit concert on 19 October 1996 in a stripped-down manner with Bowie and his then-bassist Gail Ann Dorsey on vocals.

[62] Discussing its accessibility, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said that, together with fellow singles "Modern Love" and "China Girl", the song boasts "just enough of an alien edge to make [it] distinctive".

[48] The Guardian's Alexis Petridis said it "signaled his temporary abandonment of the avant-garde" but still remains "a superb song, nervier and stranger than its global smash status might suggest".

[69] The song has been selected several times by the BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs programme, including by Lulu in 1987, Pete Waterman in 1995, John Bishop in 2012 and Noel Gallagher in 2015.

[7] In 2003, the original track was radically reworked by EMI with Bowie's approval, as part of a remix project for release in Southeast Asian territories.