David Bowie 1999
 In 1981, Queen released Under Pressure, co-written and performed with Bowie. The song was a hit and became Bowie's third UK #1 single. In the same year Bowie made a cameo appearance in the German movie Christiane F. Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, the real-life story of a 13 year-old girl in Berlin who becomes addicted to heroin and ends up prostituting herself. Bowie is credited with special cooperation in the credits and his music features prominently in the movie. The soundtrack was released in 1982 and contained a version of Heroes sung partially in German that had previously been included on the German pressing of its parent album. The same year Bowie appeared in the BBC's adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play Baal. Coinciding with transmission of the film, a five-track EP of songs from the play was released as David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal, recorded at Hansa by the Wall the previous September. It would mark Bowie’s final new release on RCA, as 1983 saw him change record labels from RCA to EMI America.
Bowie scored his first truly commercial blockbuster with Let's Dance in 1983, a slick dance album co-produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers. It was a departure from Scary Monsters for which Bowie received a bit of inside criticism; rather than revolting against 1980s dance music, he had in fact joined the scene. The title track went to #1 in the United States and United Kingdom and many now consider it a standard.
The album also featured the singles Modern Love and China Girl , the latter causing something of a stir due to its suggestive promotional video. China Girl was a remake of a song which Bowie co-wrote several years earlier with Iggy Pop, who recorded it for The Idiot. In an interview by Kurt Loder, Bowie revealed that the motivation for recording China Girl was to help out his friend Iggy Pop financially, contributing to Bowie's history of support for musicians he admired. Let's Dance was also notable as a stepping stone for the career of the late Texan guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who played on the album and was to have supported Bowie on the consequent Serious Moonlight Tour. Vaughan, however, never joined the tour after various disputes with Bowie. Vaughan was replaced by the Bowie tour veteran Earl Slick. Frank and George Simms from The Simms Brothers Band appeared as backing vocalists for the tour. The Serious Moonlight Tour was a huge success, and a single performance at the US Festival actually scored Bowie a million dollars on its own.[citation needed]
Bowie's next album was originally planned to be a live album recorded on the Serious Moonlight Tour, but EMI demanded another studio album instead. The resulting album, 1984's Tonight, was also dance-oriented, featuring collaborations with Tina Turner (and Iggy Pop), as well as various covers, including one of The Beach Boys' God Only Knows. Critics labeled it a lazy effort, dashed off by Bowie simply to recapture Let's Dance's chart success, partially due to the fact most of the tracks were either covers or rerecordings of earlier material. Yet the album bore the transatlantic Top Ten hit Blue Jean whose complete video, a 22-minute short film directed by Julien Temple, reflected Bowie's long-standing interest in combining music with drama. This video would win Bowie his only Grammy to date, for Best Short-Form Music Video. It also featured Loving the Alien, a remix of which was a minor hit in 1985. The album also has a pair of dance rewrites of Neighborhood Threat and Tonight, old songs Bowie wrote with Iggy Pop which had originally appeared on Lust for Life.
In 1985, Bowie performed several of his greatest hits at Wembley for Live Aid. At the end of his set, which comprised Rebel Rebel, TVC 15, Modern Love and 'Heroes', he introduced a film of the Ethiopian famine, for which the event was raising funds, which was set to the song Drive by the Cars. At the event, the video to a fundraising single was premi?red – Bowie performing a duet with Mick Jagger on a version of Dancing in the Street, which quickly went to #1 on release. In the same year Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group on the song This Is Not America, which was featured in the film The Falcon and the Snowman. This song was the centrepiece of the album, a collaboration intended to underline the espionage thriller's central themes of alienation and disaffection.
Bowie performing in 1987In 1986 Bowie contributed several songs to as well as acted in the film Absolute Beginners. The movie was not well reviewed but Bowie's theme song rose to #2 in the UK charts. He also took a role in the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth as Jareth, the Goblin King, who steals the baby brother of a girl named Sarah (played by Jennifer Connelly), in order to turn him into a goblin. Bowie wrote five songs for the film, the script of which which was partially written by Monty Python's Terry Jones.
Bowie's final solo album of the 80s was Never Let Me Down (1987), where he ditched the light sound of his two earlier albums, instead offering harder rock with a grungy industrial/techno dance edge. The album, which peaked at #6 in the UK, contained hit singles Day In, Day Out, Time Will Crawl and Never Let Me Down. Although a commercial success, it drew some of the harshest criticism of Bowie's career, condemned by some critics as a faceless piece of product.[citation needed] Bowie himself later described it as my nadir and an awful album. Fans of the album maintain that Bowie was simply facing the inevitable critic's backlash of an overexposed superstar.[citation needed]
Bowie decided to tour again in 1987, supporting the Never Let Me Down album. The Glass Spider Tour was preceded by nine promotional press shows before the 86-concert tour actually started on 30 May 1987. In addition to the actual band, that included Peter Frampton on lead guitar, five dancers appeared on stage for almost the entire duration of each concert. Taped pieces of dialogue were also performed by Bowie and the dancers in the middle of songs, creating an overtly theatrical effect. Several visual gimmicks were also recreated from Bowie's earlier tours. Critics of the tour described it as overproduced and claimed it pandered to then-current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancing. However, fans that saw the shows from the Glass Spider Tour were treated to many of Bowie's classics and rarities, in addition to the newer material.
In August of 1988, Bowie portrayed Pontius Pilate in the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ.
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