One artist was coming off a great run on the album chart that featured two of the songs from that album hitting No. 1. Another was hitting the Top 40 for the first time since 1976, but had built a reputation as rock's favorite chameleons.
And on the weekend of April 9, 1983, both acts made very high debuts within the Top 40.
In one corner was the Australian band Men At Work. In 1982, they stormed the American charts with the album "Business As Usual," one of the biggest and most revered albums of the early 1980s. From that album came a memorable album track called "Be Good, Johnnie." But the album was better known for two No. 1 hits that established the band: "Who Can It Be Now?" hit No. 1 for the week of October 30, 1982, and the follow-up, "Down Under," hit the top on January 15, 1983 and stayed there for four non-consecutive weeks.
But "Business As Usual" was a latecomer to the U.S. That album had been recorded through most of 1981 for the band, still starving for success anywhere let alone this country or their own. So by 1983, Men At Work's record company were clamoring for a new release. And Colin Hay, Ron Stryker, Greg Ham, Jerry Speiser and John Rees obliged, working with producer Peter McIan on an album that would be called "Cargo." The album was supposed to be released in 1982, the year the band had finished work on it, but the record company, CBS worldwide, put the brakes on the release because of how late "Business As Usual" became a hit in the U.S.
And on April 29, 1983, "Cargo" made its worldwide debut. And though the album lacked a "wow" single like the two No. 1 hits from "Business As Usual," the overall effort may have been better than the previous album. The record company banked on continued success with the band on the first release, "Overkill," a song that tells the dark tale of paranoia, but in a much darker tale than "Who Can It Be Now?" as lead singer Hay "can't get no sleep" and lives out his inner nightmare in real life every night.
While "Overkill" looked like it was going to dominate the chart just like the band's two previous hits did, along came the man first known as Ziggy Stardust, then the Thin White Duke back to the Top 40 since "Golden Years" hit No. 9 in early 1976.
It wasn't as if David Bowie went anywhere. He still released a number of albums in that seven-year period, but the avant garde music he was doing wasn't appealing to pop radio, even if songs like "Heroes," "Ashes To Ashes" and "Fashion" sounded good to the ears.
Long-time producer Tony Visconti was set to go into the studio to lay down another album with Bowie in 1982, but a funny thing happened on the way to the studio -- Bowie never called his friend. Citing a change in direction, Bowie called up Nile Rodgers to see if he was interested in doing his next album. Rodgers would admit years later that the reason he was chosen by Bowie was because Bowie "wanted to have hit singles" and that Bowie had just signed a $17 million record label for EMI America after years as a hit maker at RCA Records.
Unlike with previous albums, Bowie showed up with "songs" ready to make into demos, which he spent three days doing for Rodgers. On previous albums, Bowie showed up with little more than "ideas" and turned those ideas into songs. It took two and a half weeks to record what would be the album "Let's Dance." The coup de grace for the album came in 1982 when at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Bowie fell in love with a guitarist he saw on stage named Stevie Ray Vaughn. Said he hadn't been blown away by a guitarist since seeing Jeff Beck in the 1960s. Vaughn, who admitted to not being familiar with anything Bowie recorded, said he and the singer spent hours talking music, but not pop music -- good ol' blues music, especially Texas blues which the guitarist specialized in. Months after that performance in Switzerland, Vaughn was in the studio with Bowie and Rodgers cutting tracks for "Let's Dance."
And for the album to get a proper release, EMI decided on releasing the title track, a funky, danceable song featuring Vaughn's amazing guitar work, to most people the introduction into the Texan's amazing work. It also didn't hurt that the music video featuring the "new blonde-haired" Bowie in the Australian outback was released. It featured Aborigines going about their business when they see a pair of red shoes (which is sung about in "Let's Dance") and a young woman putting the shoes on and starting to dance when an atomic bomb flash blinds them from behind, a scary thought of the day back in 1983 with the threat of nuclear war hanging over all our heads. The video made a pretty huge impression.
As did the Men At Work video for "Overkill" in which Hay plays the paranoid lad who has trouble sleeping and finds himself walking the Australian streets looking for solace while running into his bandmates throughout. The music video was filmed in a dark manner and was filmed mainly at night with little light background.
From that, Men At Work should have won this battle, right? Well, surprise, surprise, the week of April 16, "Let's Dance" jumped 14 places to No. 15, while "Overkill" made a more modest nine-notch climb to No. 19. On April 23, 1983, "Let's Dance" leaped six more places to land at No. 9, while "Overkill" moved up four places from No. 19 to No. 15.
Bowie had delivered the knockdown punch instead of Men At Work, getting to the Top 10 first, but by April 30, both songs were in the Top 10 as "Overkill" moved up six places from No. 15 to No. 9, the same move "Let's Dance" had done the week before. "Let's Dance" moved up three places to No. 6. On May 7, both songs climbed three places, "Let's Dance" to No. 3, "Overkill" to No. 6. The next week, "Let's Dance" jumped to No. 2, while "Overkill" moved up two places to No. 4.
Then on May 21, Bowie made the move that he hadn't made since "Fame" in 1975 -- to No. 1, where the song would only spend one week at the top. "Overkill," however, held at No. 4. As a matter of fact, "Overkill" spent three straight weeks at No. 4, before pushing forward one more notch up to No. 3 the week of June 4, 1983, while "Let's Dance" spent a second straight week at No. 2 after that one week at the top.
"Overkill" and "Let's Dance" would spend two more weeks together in the Top 5 as "Overkill" dropped back to No. 4 on June 11 and then No. 5 on June 18, 1983. "Let's Dance" would spend three straight weeks at No. 2 after hitting the top, then drop to No. 3 on June 18 and No. 5 on June 25.
"Let's Dance" began another renaissance for Bowie as two more hit singles -- "China Girl" and "Modern Love" -- were primed to go Top 15. Men At Work had a successful Top 10 follow-up to "Overkill" with "It's A Mistake," which went to No. 6. But after the next single, "Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive," the band's Top 40 well dried up and it would never have another huge hit or album again.
In one manner, Rock 'n Roll's most famous chameleon, always changing to find a style of music fans loved, had slayed pop music's biggest band on the charts thanks to his belief in "having hits again" with "Let's Dance." David Bowie proved why he was a Rock 'n Roll Hall of Famer. And he introduced the world to Vaughn, who would have a dynamic career as a blues musician/guitarist/singer with numerous albums/CDs throughout the 1980s until his untimely death in a helicopter crash on August 27, 1990, at the age of 35. In April 2015, Vaughn and his group, Double Trouble, were inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame alongside Bowie, already there since 1996. Men At Work, unfortunately, never had that kind of day in the sun, though Hay continues to tour feverishly throughout the world as a solo performer.
Men At Work's mark in music will always be there for history to record.
But when Bowie beat Men At Work to the top with "Let's Dance," it was a lesson that change was always good.
Especially when it sounded this good.
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