"Let's Dance" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards in 1984 but lost to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (1982). Although Bowie had charged Rodgers with making hits for him, Bowie later said "at the time, "Let's Dance" was not mainstream. It was virtually a new kind of hybrid, using blues-rock guitar against a dance format. There wasn't anything else that really quite sounded like that at the time. So it only seems commercial in hindsight because it sold so many It was great in its way, but it put me in a real corner in that it fucked with my integrity." Bowie recalled, "[It was a good record, but it was only meant as a one-off project. I had every intention of continuing to do some unusual material after that. But the success of that record really forced me, in a way, to continue the beast. It was my own doing, of course, but I felt, after a few years, that I had gotten stuck." Visconti would state in 1985 that "it was an album he had to make".