The follow-up to his most commercially successful album Let's Dance, it was written and recorded in mid-1984 at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Canada, following the conclusion of the Serious Moonlight Tour.

Much of the album's sound is the same as its predecessor's, due to Bowie's effort to retain the new audience that he had recently attracted, although some tracks contain R&B and reggae influences.

Following the critical dismissal of his next studio album Never Let Me Down (1987), Bowie expressed dissatisfaction with this period, calling Tonight not one of his stronger efforts, a sentiment echoed by later commentators.

[3] Despite its success, Bowie found himself at a creative stalemate; he realised he no longer knew his audience and later admitted that touring left him devoid of new ideas.

[6] As he had done with Rodgers for Let's Dance, Bowie invited Bramble to Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, to record demos of his new material with a group of local Swiss musicians.

According to biographer Chris O'Leary, musicians present at the Tonight sessions said the demos were "tremendous", describing them as "funky, raw, [and] full of promise".

[1] Let's Dance engineer Bob Clearmountain was asked to return but was unavailable; he suggested Hugh Padgham, who had worked with XTC, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, and more recently with the Police as a producer.

[10] Along with Alomar, most of the personnel from Let's Dance and the tour returned for the record, including drummer Omar Hakim, bassist Carmine Rojas, percussionist Sammy Figueroa and backing vocalist George Simms.

Newcomers included trumpet player Mark Pender, backing vocalist Curtis King and Guy St Onge on marimba.

[10] One of the album's major contributors was Iggy Pop, who later said: "There's a lot more work there than is reflected in just the simple co-writing credit for two songs and some of the old stuff.

[5] The album features a guest appearance from singer Tina Turner, who sings a duet with Bowie on the title track, "Tonight".

[10] Turner had just released her massively successful comeback album Private Dancer earlier that year, which featured a cover of Bowie's 1974 song "1984".

"[5] However, Bramble himself recalled that even though he's listed as co-producer, it was "really a very communal situation where ideas came from everybody including the teaboy", and that Bowie's and Turner's vocals were nailed rather quickly (usually in one or two passes).

[6] Padgham hated many of the songs, specifically the "too poppy" "Blue Jean" and "Tonight", preferring the "more left-field" compositions that were left off the final album.

"[6] Bowie described "Loving the Alien" as a very personal bit of writing that he did not feel fitted in with the rest of the album because it is such a dark song amidst lighter fare.

[1] Despite mostly being held in low regard,[25] Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone at the time praised Bowie's version, calling it "one of the most vibrantly beautiful tracks he's ever recorded".

[5][6][16] For the design, Bowie asked Haggarty to create "something heroic", pointing to Vladimir Tretchikoff's painting of a blue-skinned Chinese woman for reference.

[41][42] It also reached number three in Japan,[43] Norway and Spain,[44][45] four in Australia,[46] Canada,[47] New Zealand and Sweden,[48][49] seven in Italy,[50] eight in Austria,[51] Switzerland and West Germany,[52][53] and nine in Finland.

It was promoted by a video co-directed by David Mallet, featuring Bowie performing on the song on an Escher-like set, at one point appearing in blue similar to the album's cover artwork.

[61] Murray complimented the record's "dizzying variety of mood and technique" in NME,[62] while Billboard said that "the once and future [Bowie] takes yet another turn, saving more edgy, passionate dance-rock for the second side while throwing the spotlight on surprisingly restrained ballads and mid-tempo rockers".

[6] Cash Box was also positive, highlighting a number of strong songs and stating that Bowie "loses none of his unique songwriting and vocal adventurousness" with an album that lies in the "same commercial vein" as Let's Dance.

[20] Ian Birch of Smash Hits felt Tonight lacked direction and referred to it as "an uneasy, bumper-to-bumper mixture of styles".

"[26] Eleanor Levy of Record Mirror additionally called it disappointing by Bowie's standards: a non-cohesive collection of both good and bad songs.

[58] More positively, Jon Pareles of The New York Times enjoyed Bowie's renditions of the Iggy Pop tracks, particularly the "Neighborhood Threat" and "Tonight".

"[6] He began a series of miscellaneous projects at the end of 1984 which ventured into 1985, starting with collaborating with the Pat Metheny Group on "This Is Not America", for the soundtrack album of the film The Falcon and the Snowman.

[1][5] He performed at Live Aid, collaborated with Mick Jagger on "Dancing in the Street" and composed songs for the 1986 films Absolute Beginners and Labyrinth, both of which Bowie starred in.

[65] In 1989, he stated that both efforts had "great material that got simmered down to product level", believing the demos were superior compared to the studio recordings.

[b] Several critics have described the album as a "mixed bag" with only a few standouts—namely "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean",[75][73][76][77] and felt the material was inferior to Let's Dance.

[19] Amongst negative reviews, author Christopher Sandford called it Bowie's "first serious studio misfire since the days of 'The Laughing Gnome' [1967]";[72] Buckley and Rob Sheffield both referred to Tonight as a "[near]-artistic" and "career-freezing" disaster, respectively;[5][81] and O'Leary dismissed it as "an immaculately rancid scrap-bag in which a hit single was stuffed into a pile of covers", standing "among the least-loved [number one] records of its era".

[82] Ben Jardine of Under the Radar magazine contested that "Loving the Alien" foreshadowed the "vocal theatrics" and narrative science fiction elements of 2016's Blackstar, and it and other album tracks sound better decades after its original release.