in September 2018, backed with a radio edit of the 2018 version of "Beat of Your Drum". Reception Reviewers have generally considered Never Let Me Down 2018 an improvement over the original album. When reviewing Loving the Alien, O'Leary gave 2018 a 6.7 out of 10. However, because Bowie's vocals remained the same – which he dubbed "over-the-top performances to ensure Bowie stood out in the traffic-jam mixes" – he found that the new arrangements and old vocals did not always match, highlighting "Beat of Your Drum" and "Zeroes". Conversely, he gave praise to the new versions of "Day-In Day-Out" and "Glass Spider". Overall, O'Leary found Never Let Me Down 2018 to be "an interesting curio", saying "the remake doesn't improve on Never Let Me Down as much as it honors the original's all-over-the-place frustration." Writing for Record Collector, Daryl Easlea praised the reworked album. He found the new production of "Time Will Crawl" and "Beat of Your Drum" drastic improvements that emerge them as "well-written pop songs", while "Zeroes" became "one of Bowie's greatest ever straight-down-the-line songs". He concluded that "the 2018 version of the album, with re-production and overdubs, is shorn of bombast and there are some truly lovely moments to be found", but expressed disappointment with the replacement of Rourke on "Shining Star". Ingalls stated: "Never Let Me Down 2018 goes a long way in salvaging those 1987 songs, with a 21st-century sensibility stripping away the overblown aesthetic of those original recordings." He further commended the 2018 version for helping the album "breathe a lot easier". Ultimately, while the record still doesn't match the quality of Bowie's best work, Ingalls felt that everyone involved in the new version "does yeoman's work here." Similarly, Michael Rippman considered Never Let Me Down 2018 to be the "crown jewel" of the box set in Consequence of Sound. Langdon Hickman of Treble wrote that with the 2018 version, the album "no longer feels like a glaring misstep in his canon", but rather brings Bowie's original vision to life, sounding closer to his Tin Machine work. Rather than being at the bottom, the new version "manage[s] to cinch itself up against [the] middle tier" of his catalogue. Erlewine, on the other hand, was more negative, writing that "the new Never Let Me Down is neither fish nor fowl: it's not radical enough to be a reimagined record – its core remains the