Outside (1995), Earthling (1997), Heathen (2002) and Reality (2003) were cited as "the best album since Scary Monsters." Buckley suggested that "Bowie should pre-emptively sticker up his next album 'Best Since Scary Monsters and have done with it". Biographer Marc Spitz considers it more accurate to call the album Bowie's "last 'young' record", in that it was his final "perfectly confident statement" and the final time that Bowie's "search for the 'new' in our world of sound [felt] pure, as opposed to betraying itself". Bowie's biographers continue to praise Scary Monsters. Pegg writes that retrospectively, Scary Monsters sounds "as fresh and dynamic as ever", and ended "Bowie's golden run of cutting-edge albums." O'Leary described it in 2019 as Bowie's most "modern"-sounding album. Spitz finds the record to have an energy that his later "good" albums don't (naming Outside and Heathen). Doggett considers it as one of Bowie's "most valuable statements", exceeding his listeners' expectations while at the same time sending a warning out to anyone who dared to follow in his footsteps. Sandford states that with Scary Monsters, Bowie "found his voice again" after years of experimentation. Perone praises the album as "a near-perfect balance of [Bowie's] pop and experimental sides" and that it remains one of the artist's "most important and consistent albums". In 2011, Paul Trynka wrote: "Scary Monsters still sparkles today. Its intense, churning grooves sound remarkably contemporary... but despite the complexity of its arrangements there are many moments of unaffected simplicity." He considers the album's "dense, tough, rock-meets-funk backup" as influential on later bands such as Blur and the Strokes. Rankings Scary Monsters has appeared on several lists of the greatest albums of all time by multiple publications. In 2000, Q ranked Scary Monsters at number 30 on its list of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever". In 2002, Pitchfork placed it at number 93 on its list of the top 100 albums of the 1980s. In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at number 27 on its list of the 100 best albums of the 1980s, saying "Bowie bridles the experimentation of his Berlin trilogy and channels those synth flourishes and off-kilter guitar licks into one of the decade's quirkiest pop albums." In 2013, NME ranked the album at number 381 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2018, Pitchfork placed it at number 53 on its revised list of