playful side-step to Let's Dance that shuffles between island influences, balladeering, and horn-heavy rock." Retrospective appraisal Retrospectively, Tonight is generally considered to be one of Bowie's weakest releases. An article for Melody Maker later dismissed Tonight as "rotten". AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called it "one of the weakest albums Bowie ever recorded" and wrote that "none of the material equals the songs on Let's Dance", although he made an exception for "Blue Jean". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described Tonight as "an expensive quickie padded with lame covers". Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote in a retrospective of Bowie's career in 2016: "Let’s Dance... had its moments ... Tonight, however, did not". Jeff Giles of Ultimate Classic Rock, when revisiting Tonight and Never Let Me Down said, "[Tonight] was pleasant enough in its way, but lacking the creative spark that fueled his best work – and nothing close to essential." Despite the general critical consensus on the album, Stylus Magazine reviewed the album in 2005 as part of its "On Second Thought" section and concluded that Tonight, although not a great album, is still a good one: "it's a much better album than you think it is, or may have been led to believe. Bowie's made some subpar records, but this isn't one of them—and frankly, even its failures aren't boring, because, well, it's an '80s Bowie album, from a decade in which he was wildly inconsistent, but also never dull." In 2016, Yo Zushi of the New Statesman defended the album, writing "no album that begins with the seven-minute masterpiece 'Loving the Alien' and contains the rocking 'Blue Jean' should have received the drubbing it got". He also argued "the TV-special-style cover of the Beach Boys' 'God Only Knows' is as stirring, in its cold, almost Brechtian way, as Station to Stations 'Wild Is the Wind' – it's like watching Elvis in [Las] Vegas through a sheet of ice". Reviewing the album's remaster as part of the Loving the Alien (1983–1988) box set, Chris Ingalls of PopMatters felt the record was a "mixed bag", but its "good moments", citing "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean", are "very good indeed". Like Bowie, his biographers have generally viewed Tonight very unfavourably. While Christopher Sandford calls it one of Bowie's "poorest" albums and "[his] first serious studio misfire since the days of 'The Laughing Gnome'," O'Leary views it in utter