The album earned largely mixed to positive reviews from music critics who felt that Stardust improved on Meyer-Landrut's artistic development and called it more authentic than previous releases.

Principal songwriting began in late summer 2011 and during that process Lena made travels to Stockholm, London, and Hamburg.

[2] Throughout the sessions, she collaborated with musicians like Matthew Benbrook,[3] Pauline Taylor,[3] Johnny McDaid,[4] James Flannigan,[4] and Sonny Boy Gustafsson,[1] who produced five of the songs.

"To the Moon" is a love song which took Lena, her co-writer Alexander Schroer and producer Swen Meyer seven months to find suitable lyrics for a certain melody.

Additionally there is a hidden track called "Lille katt" performed in Swedish previously known from the Swedish-German children's television series Emil i Lönneberga.

[6] On 20 September 2012, Lena previewed the album to a larger audience at the Reeperbahn Festival in the music venue Schmidt's Tivoli in Hamburg.

Andreas Borcholte from Der Spiegel felt that while a musical reinvention "does not take place here, Stardust is an album full of pleasing radio pop like its two predecessors [...] Lena tackles her emancipation as a songwriter with small but noticeable steps.

Not smooth pop, more playful descriptions of the condition of a 21-year-old who wants to perform in a relaxed manner after all the stress of the ESC years.

"[15] Matthias Reichel, writing for CDStarts.de, called the album "good work" and noted: "If you allow her a little patience for the artistic development that is already moving in the right direction on Stardust, everyone will be satisfied.

[13][16][14] Münchner Merkur critic Jörg Heinrich found that the sound of the album was "much more casual, fresher, more international than Raab's clinically pure TV Total soul."

"[12] Maximilian Kloes, writing for Focus, called Stardust a "typical Lena album: a few hits, a little filler, strong approaches, flat lyrics.