[9] The trip inspired him to write tribute songs for three American icons: the artist Andy Warhol, the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and the rock band the Velvet Underground, more specifically their singer Lou Reed.

[3] Bowie and his new backing trio, soon to be named the Spiders from Mars, played for the first time on 3 June on BBC DJ John Peel's radio programme In Concert.

"[3][21] On 9 July, with Wakeman in the line-up, Bowie and the band recorded two takes of "Bombers" and "It Ain't Easy", the latter featuring backing vocals by Dana Gillespie.

[12] Christopher Sandford states that "the songs [are] characterised by the lush ambience established by Bowie's vocal and the piano" and, along with Elton John and Phil Collins, helped create music on the "easy-listening continuum".

[26] The music journalist Peter Doggett concurs, regarding Hunky Dory as "a collective of attractively accessible pop songs, through which Bowie tested out his feelings about the nature of stardom and power".

[27] Rick Quinn described the songs in PopMatters as a fusion of "British pop, orchestral works, art-rock, folk and ballads" that emerge to form glam rock.

[29] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic describes it as "a kaleidoscopic array of pop styles, tied together only by Bowie's sense of vision: a sweeping, cinematic mélange of high and low art, ambiguous sexuality, kitsch, and class".

[30] Michael Gallucci of Ultimate Classic Rock notes that it is Bowie's first record to include "a mix of pop, glam, art and folk wrapped in an ambisexual pose that would come to define the artist".

[1] James Perone similarly describes the album as "a unique blend of folk, pop, glam, and progressive rock" that distinguished Bowie from other musicians at the time.

[31] Peter Ormerod of The Guardian writes that the music of Hunky Dory celebrates "uncertainty, rootlessness, inner chaos, difference, otherness, doubt and impermanence" and did it with "beauty, style and charisma".

[33] Doggett notes that "Changes" is a "statement of purpose": as the opening track, the song provided a stark contrast to the hard rock sound found on its predecessor.

[19] Although Bowie was fixated on becoming Ziggy Stardust at the time of its recording, the song has no connection to Mars itself; the title was a reference to the recent media frenzy of the US and Soviet Union racing to get to the red planet.

[39] "Kooks" is noticeably lighter than the two tracks it is sequenced between but, according to Pegg, ultimately "carries a hint of [the album's] preoccupation with the compulsion to fictionalise life, as Bowie invites his son to 'stay in our lovers' story'".

Writer Colin Wilson wrote in The Occult (1971) that thought was a form of quicksand that allowed consciousness to keep the unconscious beyond reach, from which Doggett concluded that "'Quicksand' was Bowie's plea to search within himself to be shown the way".

Pegg writes that the track provides a "cogent counterpoint" to the "angst" of "Quicksand" and the "cautionary warnings" of "Changes" and is best remembered for Bowie's saxophone break, Ronson's string arrangement, and Wakeman's piano solo.

[19][48] The final tribute song on the album, "Queen Bitch" is largely inspired by the rock band the Velvet Underground, specifically their lead singer Lou Reed.

Pegg states: "Part of the genius of 'Queen Bitch' is that it filters the archness of Marc Bolan and Kemp through the streetwise attitude of Reed: this is a song that succeeds in making the phrase 'bipperty-bopperty hat' sound raunchy and cool.

[54] The instrumentation echoes the music of The Man Who Sold the World, featuring "sinister" sound effects and Bowie's vocal accompanied by Ronson's acoustic guitar.

Pegg writes: "Bowie's decision to use a re-coloured photo suggests a hand-tinted lobby-card from the days of the silent cinema and, simultaneously, Warhol's famous Marilyn Diptych screen-prints.

He told Peter and Leni Gillman, the authors of Alias David Bowie, that the landlord had an unusual vocabulary that was infused with "upper-crust jargon" such as "prang" and "whizzo" and "everything's hunky-dory".

[68] Gallucci writes that although the album did not make Bowie a star, it "got him noticed", and the success of Ziggy Stardust helped Hunky Dory garner a larger audience.

[3][56] Melody Maker called it "the most inventive piece of song-writing to have appeared on record in a considerable time", while Danny Holloway of the NME described it as Bowie "at his brilliant best".

[81] Billboard gave the album a positive review, praising it as "a heavy debut for RCA, loaded with the kind of Top 40 and FM appeal that should break him through big on the charts.

The New York Times wrote that with Hunky Dory, Bowie became "the most intellectually brilliant man yet to choose the long-playing album as his medium of expression", while Rock magazine called him "the most singularly gifted artist making music today.

"[83] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau hailed Bowie as "a singer-composer with brains, imagination, and a good idea of how to use a recording console", and the album "a quick change tour de force that is both catchy and deeply felt".

[86] Douglas Wolk of Pitchfork reviewed the album's remaster for the 2015 box set Five Years 1969–1973 and gave it a 10-out-of-10 rating, believing the songs to be "scattered but splendid" and finding Bowie's songwriting a "huge leap" from his previous works.

[18] BBC Music's Daryl Easlea wrote that the album saw Bowie finding his own voice after "scrabbling around stylistically" for almost a decade and "finally demonstrated [his] enormous potential to the listening public".

[53] Schrieber stated: "Hunky Dory marked the true start of what would be one of the most successful careers in rock music, spawning millions of scarily obsessive fans.

[92] In 2016, Billboard's Joe Lynch argued that Hunky Dory provided the "blueprint" for lo-fi indie pop records for the next 25 years, citing Ariel Pink as an artist influenced by the album.

"[3] In an interview with Mojo in 2007, KT Tunstall declared Hunky Dory her favorite album, saying: "It's the only record where I've experienced total jaw-dropping awe for the whole of it because that feeling of being lost and being taken somewhere else is so strong.