In the second half of 1976, David Bowie and his friend Iggy Pop relocated to the Château d'Hérouville in Hérouville, France, to escape from the drug culture of Los Angeles.

Some of these included using old tunes played backwards, employing identical chord sequences for different songs and having the musicians swap instruments, as Alomar and Davis did on "Boys Keep Swinging".

"[9] The biographer Nicholas Pegg writes that several songs, including "African Night Flight", "Yassassin" and "Red Sails", were composed "around a melodic clash of disparate cultures".

"[9] As such, Lodger is the most "accessible" record of the Berlin Trilogy;[24] AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine described the songs as "twisted avant-pop",[25] while Belew similarly characterised them as "avant-garde pop music".

[1] Although Bryan Wawzenek, also of Ultimate Classic Rock, found Lodger to be the more accessible record of the Berlin Trilogy, he also felt it to be the most experimental, observing elements of Middle Eastern music, reggae, world and krautrock within the vast array of pop songs.

[29][30][31] After the ominousness of Low and "Heroes", biographers have described the opening track, "Fantastic Voyage", as "surprisingly delicate" and "serene";[32][33] a thought author Peter Doggett believes implies a "less intense" record.

[33][35] Bowie composed "Move On" after accidentally playing his earlier composition "All the Young Dudes" backwards, then having Alomar write out the reversed chord sequence.

[35][34] "Yassassin" combines funk and reggae,[34] using a violin played by Simon House to create a sound reminiscent of a Middle Eastern folk song and Turkish music.

[28] Doggett describes "Look Back in Anger" as "propulsive and impatient",[34] while Ned Raggett of AllMusic called it a "sharp-edged, thrillingly modern rock song".

[9] Regarding side one's theme of travel, Pegg writes that the songs revive a "perennial motif" prevailing throughout the Berlin Trilogy, highlighting the line, "I've lived all over the world, I've left every place" from the Low track "Be My Wife",[42] pointing out the journey is both metaphorical and geographical.

[34] Like the instrumental "Heroes" track "Neuköln", the song is about the discrimination Turkish immigrants who lived in Berlin faced, although its lyrical approach is more direct.

The original gatefold album sleeve featured a full-length shot by photographer Brian Duffy of Bowie in a tiled bathroom looking like an accident victim, heavily made up with an apparently broken nose and a bandaged hand.

Inside the gatefold are pictures of Che Guevara's corpse, Andrea Mantegna's painting Lamentation of Christ and Bowie being readied for the cover photo.

[28] Buckley writes that within that time, new wave had begun to emerge and overtake punk rock as the dominant genre, highlighting the likes of Blondie and Kate Bush.

According to Buckley, Numan's fame indirectly led to Bowie taking a more pop-oriented direction for his next studio album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980).

The video features Bowie walking down a road in London's Earl's Court, attracting surprised fans, interspersed with shots of him as an abused DJ.

The video, inspired by Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), depicts Bowie as a painter in an attic studio whose self-portrait begins to decay and melt.

[9][24] Among the negative reviews, Greil Marcus of Rolling Stone called the album "one of [Bowie's] weakest ... scattered, a footnote to "Heroes", an act of marking time",[67] while Jon Savage of Melody Maker found it boring and "a nice enough pop record, beautifully played, produced and crafted, and slightly faceless".

Ken Emerson in The New York Times called it Bowie's "most eloquent" record in years,[72] while Robert Christgau of The Village Voice wrote favourably, stating that although the songs may seem impassive and not designful, he believed those qualities are "part of their charm—the way they confound categories of sensibility and sophistication is so frustrating it's satisfying".

[66] Tim Lott of Record Mirror wrote: "It's simply appealing in such an unusual way that a clear definition is impossible, even when plotted against its own predecessors rather than 'pop music' in general."

[78] However, soon after its release, NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray predicted that Lodger would "have to 'grow in potency' over a few years, but eventually, it will be accepted as one of Bowie's most complex and rewarding projects".

[28] While biographer Christopher Sandford calls Lodger a "slick, calculatedly disposable record",[43] Buckley contends that "its stature grows with each passing year",[14] and Pegg sums up, "undervalued and obscure practically from the moment of its release, its critical re-evaluation is long overdue".

[80] Perone argues that Lodger is "by far" Bowie's "most lyrically and musically challenging" album of his late 1970s and early 1980s output, further illustrating the influence of contemporaries on the artist.

[82] Biographer Marc Spitz agrees, citing its use of world music as influential on Talking Heads' Remain in Light (1980) and Paul Simon's Graceland (1986).

"[90] Ian MacDonald agreed, writing that it was always thought of as the "anticlimax" of the trilogy, but nevertheless, stating that "if it doesn't add up as a single listening experience, its parts are rarely without quality.

"[91] Erlewine also gave the album a positive review, writing: "It might not stretch the boundaries of rock like Low and "Heroes", but it arguably utilises those ideas in a more effective fashion.

[39] Although he felt Lodger might always be remembered as the least "essential" effort of the Berlin Trilogy, Wawzenek concludes: "as a postcard from one of Bowie's most exciting phases, it's a fascinating glimpse of the artist in the midst of a bold transition".

[77][102] Erlewine praised the remix as "dense and colorful without changing the feel of the original", helping to "focus attention on an excellent record that often gets overshadowed by the three albums accompanying it in this box.

"[104] Rolling Stone's Kory Grow wrote that the new mix "loosens" the album's sound, saying there is "a greater emphasis on orchestral strings" and the percussion "sometimes comes out of different speakers".

Although the original 1979 vinyl release featured a gatefold cover,[105] some later LP versions such as RCA's 1981 US reissue presented the album in a standard non-gatefold sleeve.