of ideas, time signatures and grooves that never quite comes together", Moran concluded: "Never Let Me Down can boast a handful of tracks that are a credible mix of the commercial and the experimental, a characteristic which has always been the mainstay of Bowie's best work." Many commentators agree that the album's poor production choices marred what they considered good songwriting. In 2018, Chris Ingalls of PopMatters named "Time Will Crawl" and "Zeroes" among those affected by the "headache-inducing [and] overstuffed with garish" production. Author Marc Spitz noted "Day-In Day-Out", "87 and Cry", "New York's in Love" and "Time Will Crawl" as tracks that are hampered by poor production. Perone contends that the production on "Zeroes" and "Beat of Your Drum" make the tracks sound too much like other contemporary pop of the era "to stand out as distinctive". Dave Thompson highlights "Zeroes", the title track, "Glass Spider", and particularly "Time Will Crawl" as standout tracks, finding Bowie's initial dismissive attitude towards the project "galling" when considering the "strength" of these tracks. Journalist Sean Doyle, editor of the website The Worst Albums Ever, similarly stated that Never Let Me Down is "produced to death": "The extravagant production clashes sharply with the album's often socially minded lyrics, so much so that they become entirely flippant and insincere." Bowie's biographers have given Never Let Me Down mixed assessments, but most consider it better than Tonight. Buckley calls Never Let Me Down more focused and coherent than its predecessor, but finds that it suffers from overproduction. O'Leary similarly calls it Bowie's "ugliest-sounding record" since Diamond Dogs, noting that Bowie produced both records with the intention of "proving himself", which backfired. Trynka states that the record is "bereft of inspiration", but agrees that it is "neither as good nor as bad as Tonight". In a similar statement, Spitz describes Never Let Me Down as "not a terrible album", but "another slothful one" following Tonight and Labyrinth. Perone, likewise, considers it better and more artistically daring than Tonight and writes that it achieves "a better balance between working on pop songs and challenging songs". Nevertheless, he acknowledges its dated production as its biggest flaw. Like Perone, Pegg states that Never Let Me Down is not Bowie's "finest hour, but by no means his worst". He argues that it comes off as more of a David Bowie album than either of its two predecessors. Christopher Sandford