Like Bowie, his biographers have generally viewed "Tonight" very unfavourably. While Christopher Sandford calls it one of Bowie's "poorest" albums and "first serious studio misfire since the days of 'The Laughing Gnome'," O'Leary views it in utter disdain: "an immaculately rancid scrap-bag in which a hit single was stuffed into a pile of covers," further considering it "among the least-loved [number one records of its era." Buckley calls "Tonight" "the nearest thing Bowie had come across to an artistic disaster," while Paul Trynka notes that with "Tonight", Bowie's sense of "risk" and randomness "ebbed away". Pegg finds that despite its flaws, "Tonight" is a "more interesting and rewarding" record than its predecessor. He considers Bowie's reggae renditions of "Don't Look Down" and the title track "surprisingly successful", and the two Bowie-penned tracks as having strong songwriting. He concludes that it was the first Bowie album that was "manifestly behind its time". In his book "The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s", author Peter Doggett describes "Tonight" as "bereft of inspiration", although he gave praise to "Loving the Alien".