Robin Eggar attempted to pursue RCA to issue "The Passenger" as an A-side, feeling it would be a hit, but he was ignored. Following its use in a car commercial two decades later, the song was released as an A-side by Virgin Records in March 1998 with "Lust for Life" and The Idiot track "Nightclubbing", with the catalog number 7243 8 94921 2 5. The single peaked at number 22 on the UK Singles Chart and remained on the chart for three weeks. "The Passenger" has remained a mainstay of Pop's live performances. The song received an official music video in 2020, 43 years after its initial release. "The Passenger" has appeared on several best-of lists. In a 2001 list compiling "the 100 Greatest Singles of the Post-Punk Era", the writers of Uncut magazine placed "The Passenger" at number 95. The staff of Billboard placed the song at number 78 in a list compiling "the 100 Greatest Car Songs of All Time" in 2016. The same year, Pitchfork ranked it the 95th best song of the 1970s. Benjamin Scheim wrote: "It's easy to listen to the intro and envision a million bands at home trying to figure out how to copy it." The song was also included in the 2008 book The Pitchfork 500. The aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists "The Passenger" as the 13th most acclaimed song of 1977, the 125th most acclaimed song of the 1970s, and the 590th most acclaimed song in history. In media The song has been featured in numerous movies, video games, documentaries and TV shows including He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, This Must Be the Place, Radiofreccia, 30 Days, Jarhead and the 2002 video game Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2. More recently, Up in the Air, The Weather Man, Kurt Cobain: About a Son, Scarface: The World Is Yours, 24 Hour Party People, If I Stay, Sons of Anarchy, War Dogs, Ash vs Evil Dead, 12 Monkeys, Berlin Station, The Boys, Dexter: New Blood, The Lincoln Lawyer and The Umbrella Academy in addition to advertisements for Dublin Bus, Captain Morgan, Kohl's "Simply Vera" collection, Guinness, the fifth season of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, and the film Waking Life. In 2009, New Zealand broadband internet provider Orcon held a promotion where eight fans re-recorded the song via the internet. The recording featured instruments foreign to the original, such as a flute.