"Hunky Dory introduced a kinder, gentler David Bowie after two heavy albums laden with mythological imagery and pleasant dread—not that this album doesn't also include heavy doses of the latter...Hunky Dory swings wildly between Bowie's otherworldly preoccupations and scenes of domestic tranquility that serve to humanize and ground—if just for a short time—an artist searching for his next move. " - analogplanet, Music 10/11, Sound 7/11

Hunky Dory has been described as having "a kaleidoscopic array of pop styles, tied together only by Bowie's sense of vision: a sweeping, cinematic mélange of high and low art, ambiguous sexuality, kitsch, and class."