highlighting a number of strong songs and stating that Bowie "loses none of his unique songwriting and vocal adventurousness" with an album that lies in the "same commercial vein" as Let's Dance. However, other reviewers criticised it for lacking creativity. Ian Birch of Smash Hits felt Tonight lacked direction and referred to it as "an uneasy, bumper-to-bumper mixture of styles". Rolling Stone said, "This album is a throwaway, and David Bowie knows it." Eleanor Levy of Record Mirror additionally called it disappointing by Bowie's standards: a collection of songs—some good, some bad—that do not fit well together. Padgham also said that it was less innovative than other Bowie albums. Subsequent events and legacy Almost immediately following its release, Bowie gave few press interviews for Tonight, and appeared almost apologetic. In one interview he said, "Recently I've used an accepted vocabulary, as [Brian] Eno would say...I feel on the whole fairly happy about my state of mind and my physical being and I guess I wanted to put my musical being in a similar staid and healthy area, but I'm not sure that that was a very wise thing to do." He began a series of miscellaneous projects at the end of 1984 which ventured into 1985, starting with collaborating with the Pat Metheny Group on "This Is Not America", for the soundtrack album for The Falcon and the Snowman (1985). He then performed at Live Aid, collaborated with Mick Jagger on "Dancing in the Street" and composed songs for the films Absolute Beginners (1985) and Labyrinth (1986), both of which Bowie starred in. As well as acknowledging that Tonight was not one of his stronger efforts, Bowie would later distance himself from his 1984–1987 period following the critical dismissal of Never Let Me Down. In 1989, while working with Tin Machine, he described both Tonight and Never Let Me Down as: In 1993, he said he was indifferent about what he was doing and he "let everyone tell [him] what to do". In a 2016 retrospective ranking all of Bowie's 26 studio albums from worst to best, Bryan Wawzenek of Ultimate Classic Rock placed Tonight at number 24 (above Black Tie White Noise and Never Let Me Down). He called the entire record as a mixed bag except for "Blue Jean". The writers of Consequence of Sound ranked Tonight number 20 in their 2018 list, calling it "a sultry and