Opening with a train-like noise, the song's first half is a slow march, while the second takes the form of a prog-disco suite in a different key and tempo than the first.

Retrospectively, it has been named one of Bowie's greatest songs and, like its parent album, is seen as the indicator of where his career was heading at the time.

[2] According to Emily Barker of NME, Bowie "starved his body of all nutrients (besides milk, red peppers, and cocaine)" during the song's recording.

"[4] Author David Buckley states that Bowie's only memory of the sessions was "standing with [lead guitarist] Earl Slick in the studio and asking him to play a Chuck Berry riff in the same key throughout the opening of 'Station to Station'.

[9] After several verses, at the five-minute mark, a thud of drums signals a change of tempo and key and the band erupts into what Alan Light of Rolling Stone calls a "celebratory groove", which lasts for the rest of the track.

[7] According to Nicholas Pegg, the effect "acknowledges" the influence of the 1974 album Autobahn by the German electronic band Kraftwerk, which begins with a car starting up and driving across the stereo speakers.

[5] Stuart Berman of Pitchfork supports this, saying: "the title track's momentous prog-disco suite [...] charts a course from spiritual void toward ecstatic religious reawakening.

[16] Pegg writes: "It's possible to discern in ["Station to Station"] a distinct flavour of the groove, tempo and sense of building tension created by the famous rising riff of Physical Graffiti's standout track 'Kashmir'", an epic track that evokes a "troubled spiritual journey" through its music and lyrics.

[5][6][9] The persona was noticeably darker than Bowie's previous characters, being described as "a mad aristocrat",[6] an "amoral zombie",[19] and "an emotionless Aryan superman".

[21] The lyrics themselves contain very cryptic messages and direct references, including to the 13th century Jewish mystical system known as the Kabbalah and gnosticism.

"[22] Doggett believes the main themes of the track are magic, the arts of legendary musicians, both real and fictitious, the Kabbalah's mythical account of progress from Kether to Malkuth, love and cocaine.

[11] Themes in this section include drug use, as presented in the lyrics "It's not the side effects of the cocaine/I'm thinking that it must be love",[25] which he sings in a joyous tone.

[12][26] The song was also released as a promotional single, with the catalogue number 42549 A, in January 1976 in France by RCA Records, with a shortened duration of 3:40 and "TVC 15" as the B-side.

Nicholas Pegg described it as "Scintillatingly performed and gorgeously produced, it represents one of the high watermarks in his studio work.

[5] Dave Thompson of AllMusic calls the guitar work "fabulous" and makes the argument that the track could be the most "evocative" song Bowie ever wrote.

[10] Needham also found it impressive that the song did not "overshadow" the rest of the album, which he believes shows "how much Bowie was on fire".

[31] He continued, "hearing Bowie croon Kabbalistic jargon like 'one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth' to [a] massive crowd serves as a helpful reminder that he remained, even then, one of the weirdest people ever to achieve festival-headlining success".

[34] Along with the rest of the album, the song presented the new direction Bowie was taking in his career, from the funk and soul of Young Americans to the experimental sound of his Berlin Trilogy.

[10] Doggett writes: "Here was Bowie's first nod of recognition to the so-called motorik sound of Krautrock, as the ominous, Wagnerian strains of the early segments of the song were succeeded by the propulsive dance rhythms of the finale.

[36][37] The Stage version was also featured in the Uli Edel film Christiane F. (1981), where Bowie, lip-synching to his 1978 recording, made an appearance as himself performing the song at a concert.