By no means am I saying that what I suggest DID happen, just theorizing out loud. I find the resemblance between DLHFY and Let's Dance so striking!! Most likely a coincidence but it is to be noted that at the time Chic was with Atlantic, a WB subsidiary. And we know Prince used to send vault cassettes to WB. Could it be that Nile Rodgers was played that song once by some exec and, some months later, was inspired by it when arranging Let's Dance, knowing P's song would most likely remain unreleased? Nile was doing a lot of drugs at the time but from his autobiography he seems he and 'Nard were the kind of dude to be able to play a whole track after hearing it only once.

.

I know no one can possibly know and that it's very unlikely, it's just a fun theory that I wanted to submit to the crowds, so no fuss and no fights, just fun, educated guesses

databank said:

By no means am I saying that what I suggest DID happen, just theorizing out loud. I find the resemblance between DLHFY and Let's Dance so striking!! Most likely a coincidence but it is to be noted that at the time Chic was with Atlantic, a WB subsidiary. And we know Prince used to send vault cassettes to WB. Could it be that Nile Rodgers was played that song once by some exec and, some months later, was inspired by it when arranging Let's Dance, knowing P's song would most likely remain unreleased? Nile was doing a lot of drugs at the time but from his autobiography he seems he and 'Nard were the kind of dude to be able to play a whole track after hearing it only once.

.

I know no one can possibly know and that it's very unlikely, it's just a fun theory that I wanted to submit to the crowds, so no fuss and no fights, just fun, educated guesses

It's a fun theory and there's definitely a similarity, but judging from the rest of their work I'm pretty sure Bowie and Nile were capable of creating Let's Dance without any inspiration from P.

i hear a little similarity but not enough to think one song influenced the other

RJOrion said:

i hear a little similarity but not enough to think one song influenced the other

Exactly. They are both songs of that era and just like a lot songs of the era, there are similarities.

DLHFY (very loosely) has quite a bit of similarity to Jesse Johnson's/Ta Mara's 'Everybody Dance'.

.

[Edited 9/22/20 7:50am]

Your theory does not sound that far-fetched. The first 20 seconds sound a lot like Let´s Dance but then again, many songs from that era have similarities so I´m not sure if Nile even heard Prince´s tapes. But there is indeed a similarity as far as the rhythm is concerned.