"While the music isn't far removed from the post-punk of the early '80s, it does sound fresh, hip, and contemporary, which is something Bowie lost over the course of the '80s." Eduardo Rivadavia praised the record's "risk-taking creativity" in Ultimate Classic Rock, writing that the artist's decision to take time writing lyrics resulted in some of the best lyrics and vocal performances of his career. He ultimately called the album one of Bowie's "very best career efforts." Author Peter Doggett describes Scary Monsters as one of Bowie's "most valuable statements", writing that it "annull[ed] audience expectations" and launched a "warning for those who might dare to follow in his footsteps." Reviewing the album's remaster for the 2017 box set A New Career in a New Town (1977–1982), Chris Gerard of PopMatters highlighted Bowie's vocal performance on the record as among his best, further complimenting the songs' arrangements and harmonies as "jaw-droppingly brilliant as anything you'll find in the realm of rock 'n' roll." Analysing the album for its 40th anniversary in 2020, Stereogums Ryan Leas described Scary Monsters as "the less-heralded classic of Bowie's career", complimenting the way Bowie was able to mesh the different eras of his career up to that point into a creative whole. Leas concluded: "[Scary Monsters] was the album that best-captured everything Bowie was about — and it will always be the conduit through which everything travelled, all of his old selves folded in and carried forward through the rest of his life. In a 2013 readers' poll for Rolling Stone, Scary Monsters was voted Bowie's seventh greatest album. The magazine argued that it would be his final "satisfying from start to finish" album. Reflecting on the critical and commercial success of Scary Monsters, Visconti stated, "We kind of felt that we'd finally achieved our Sgt. Pepper, a goal we had in mind since The Man Who Sold the World." Visconti further said: "It is one of my favourite Bowie albums ever." Despite his glowing assessment of the album, Scary Monsters proved to be the final collaboration between Bowie and Visconti for over 20 years, after Bowie chose Nile Rodgers to produce Let's Dance. Although Bowie would achieve worldwide mega-stardom and commercial success in the following years, in particular with Let's Dance, many commentators consider Scary Monsters to be "his last great album" and the "benchmark" for each new release. Well-regarded later efforts such as