The same year, Pitchfork ranked it the 95th best song of the 1970s. The staff of Billboard placed the song at number 78 in a list compiling "the 100 Greatest Car Songs of All Time" in 2016. In a 2001 list compiling "the 100 Greatest Singles of the Post-Punk Era", the writers of Uncut magazine placed "The Passenger" at number 95. "The Passenger" has appeared on several best-of lists. The song received an official music video in 2020, 43 years after its initial release. "The Passenger" has remained a mainstay of Pop's live performances. The single peaked at number 22 on the UK Singles Chart and remained on the chart for three weeks. Following its use in a car commercial two decades later, the song was released as an A-side by Virgin Records in March 1998 with " Lust for Life" and The Idiot track "Nightclubbing", with the catalog number 7243 8 94921 2 5. Pop's press officer Robin Eggar attempted to pursue RCA to issue "The Passenger" as an A-side, feeling it would be a hit, but he was ignored. The song was released as the B-side of "Success" in October 1977, but failed to chart. RCA Records issued Lust for Life on September 9, 1977, with "The Passenger" as the fourth track on side one of the original LP, between "Some Weird Sin" and " Tonight". Review characterize the track as garage rock and proto-punk. Tom McGinnis of AllMusic described the music as a "laid-backĀ .
Biographer Paul Trynka states that the song was "a simple celebration of life", of the "long walks" Pop would take growing up and his own reputation at the time. I didn't have a driver's licence or a vehicle". In an interview with The Guardian in 2016, Pop said "The Passenger" was partly inspired by touring with David Bowie: "I'd been riding around North America and Europe in David's car ad infinitum. The lyrics have been interpreted as "Iggy's knowing commentary on Bowie's cultural vampirism". They were inspired by a Jim Morrison poem, titled "The Lords", that saw "modern life as a journey by car", as well as rides on the Berlin S-Bahn, according to Pop's former girlfriend Esther Friedmann.
Similar to other tracks on Lust for Life, the lyrics for "The Passenger" were mostly composed on the spot in the studio. Bowie, Pop, and producer-engineer Colin Thurston produced Lust for Life under the pseudonym "Bewlay Bros.", named after the final track on Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory. The lineup consisted of Pop, Gardiner, David Bowie on piano, Carlos Alomar on guitar, and brothers Tony and Hunt Sales on bass and drums, respectively.
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Gardiner thought of the riff in early 1977 as he was wandering throughout the countryside, "in the field beside an orchard, on one of those glorious spring days with the trees in full blossom." The song was recorded at Hansa Studio by the Wall in West Berlin between May and June 1977. "The Passenger" was co-written by Iggy Pop and guitarist Ricky Gardiner the former wrote the lyrics while the latter composed the music.