[6] Like other famous songs of the era — "Highway Star", "Stairway to Heaven", "Bohemian Rhapsody" — "Radar Love" is composed as a suite with several distinctive and quite different sections, although the tonality throughout remains similar.

According to Rustyn Rose at Metalholic, the song "is a rock masterpiece, from its hooky chugging bassline, to its simple but unmistakable riffs, to its catchy anthemesque chorus.

[10] In 2011 it received a vast number of votes as the "Ultimate Driving Song" in a poll on PlanetRock and "finished well ahead of its nearest rival, Deep Purple's 'Highway Star'.

According to the radar-love.net TimeTravel,[12] the song has been covered more than 800 times by, among others, Tribe 8, Ministry, Omen, U2,[13] R.E.M., Ian Stuart Donaldson, Sun City Girls, Dutch group Centerfold, White Lion, Blue Man Group, Def Leppard, [citation needed] James Last, NWOBHM band Aragorn, Nine Pound Hammer, Oh Well, Joe Santana, the Space Lady,[14] and the Pressure Boys.

[citation needed] WaveGroup Sound covered the White Lion version of the song in the 2007 video game Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s.

The song has been featured in several films including The Private Eyes (1976), Wayne's World 2 (1993), Detroit Rock City (1999), Baby Driver (2017), and The Tender Bar (2021).