Pop's vocal performances but considered the music innovative and compulsive, particularly on side two, which he deemed borderline heavy metal. In a more mixed review, Stephen Demorest of Phonograph Record said he enjoyed the record, due to its "completely schizophrenic" nature. He called "China Girl" the highlight of the album, but felt other tracks were not among Pop's finest: "It's a mixture of bluff... and beauty." Retrospective reviews have been largely positive, with many noting Pop's artistic evolution. Mark Deming of AllMusic praised the record, writing that The Idiot showcased a different side of Pop that had yet to be seen, and if fans at the time were expecting Raw Power 2.0, it "made it clear" that Pop had evolved: "it's a flawed but powerful and emotionally absorbing work." Biographer Paul Trynka writes that over time, The Idiot would be classified as an album that was "more respected than loved", but acknowledged its influence on the "soul" of post-punk. Writing for Clash magazine on the record's 35th anniversary, Amanda Arber stated: "The Idiot stands as a dark, dense and desolate display of an artist confronting his demons head-on, and growing up in the process. It was bleakly revolutionary then, and it is now." Reviewing the album as part of the 2020 box set The Bowie Years, Sasha Geffen of Pitchfork praised it, stating: "The Idiot may lack fury, but it compensates with sardonic humor and perfectly tuned melodrama – both tools that would become wildly popular across all artistic media in the 1980s." Influence and legacy Although reviewers consider The Idiot good in its own right, Pop's fans have criticized the album as unrepresentative of his repertoire and as evidence of his being "co-opted" by Bowie for the latter's own ends. In his contemporary review of the record, Riegel comments, "As the star of The Idiot... Iggy Pop seems more under David Bowie's manipulative thumb than ever before, a condition that can be taken as positive or negative." Furthermore, Jones described it as his "second favorite David Bowie album". When reviewing Lust for Life, Pete Makowski of Sounds magazine felt The Idiot suffered from "being a part of Bowie's come down," calling it "a Low disco platter". O'Leary considers The Idiot a Bowie album just as much as a Pop one. Although Bowie's "Berlin Trilogy" is said to consist of Low, "Heroes", and Lodger (1979), O'Leary argues the true "Berlin