negatively, declaring that Bowie "used R&B as a prop, not a springboard". In Christgau's Record Guide, veteran critic Robert Christgau found the idea of the record good, but its overall execution subpar. On the other hand, Billboard responded positively, stating that, "there's humor in this music if you want to take it as a look back in musical time." Robert Hilburn was also positive in the Los Angeles Times. Describing it as a "light, unpretentious, high-spirited album", he hailed Pin Ups as "one of the year's most inviting albums" and one that deserves special attention. Legacy Pin Ups continues to receive mixed-to-negative reactions in later decades. When reviewing the album as part of the 2015 box set Five Years (1969–1973), Pitchfork Douglas Wolk was unfavorable. He cited sloppy execution and the overall idea "more interesting in theory", believing that all the originals were "vastly" superior and Bowie added nothing interesting to any of them. He further believed that it didn't help that the Spiders from Mars were falling apart when recording it. Bruce Eder of AllMusic similarly found the album to be out of place with Bowie's output up to that point. He continued, "Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane had established Bowie as perhaps the most fiercely original of all England's glam rockers, so an album of covers didn't make any sense and was especially confusing for American fans," further criticising the song choices as unknown. However, Eder did praise Bowie's cover of "Sorrow" as a "distinct improvement" over the original. Bowie's biographers have given Pin Ups mixed reactions. Buckley describes it as "uneven but beloved by many". O'Leary attributes its "scattershot feel" and "lack of a coherent style" to the dysfunctional nature of its recording, while Sandford acknowledges the album's lack of originality in the song arrangements. Doggett calls Pin Ups "an exercise in Pop Art", meaning it was "a reproduction and interpretation of work by [another artist], intended for a mass audience". James Perone, on the other hand, argues that Pin Ups predated the release of covers album by other English artists, such as John Lennon with Rock 'n' Roll (1975) and Elvis Costello with Almost Blue (1981) and Kojak Variety (1995). Perone also recognises the album's musical influence, stating that Bowie's version of "Here Comes the Night" was a forerunner in the post-punk and new wave sound of the late 1970s and early 1980s, presaging songs such