had it been recorded earlier in 1967, "would have made Sgt Pepper an even better album". In the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Rob Sheffield wrote: "Yellow Submarine was a flat soundtrack rather than a real album, but here's a question: Why is George's 'It's All Too Much' not heralded as one of the top five all-time psychedelic freakouts in rock history?" Sheffield features the track in his 2017 book Dreaming the Beatles, where he refers to it as "the great lost Beatle song – the one that deserves to be infinitely more famous than it is", adding: "It's where they really nailed the Sgt. Pepper sound – that combination of acid-rock momentum and brass-band frippery. 'It's All Too Much' would have been the second or third best song on Sgt. Pepper ..." Richie Unterberger of AllMusic similarly considers Yellow Submarine to be "inessential" and describes the track as "the jewel of the new songs ... resplendent in swirling [organ], larger-than-life percussion, and tidal waves of feedback guitar" and "a virtuoso excursion into otherwise hazy psychedelia". In Mojos The Beatles' Final Years Special Edition (2003), Peter Doggett acknowledged the comparative rarity of "It's All Too Much" within the Beatles canon and added: "Yet it's one of the pinnacles of British acid-rock, its sleepwalking rhythm retaining a bizarrely contemporary feel today." Having included the track in his 2011 list of Harrison's "10 Greatest Beatles Songs", Joe Bosso of MusicRadar commented: "At times the song seems to drift away with Harrison's dreamy verses, but just as quickly it's chopping down trees with explosive percussion and thunderous handclaps. Wild guitar breaks by both Harrison and John Lennon help to make It's All Too Much a dizzying treat." In his book Psychedelia and Other Colours, Rob Chapman writes that further to the devotional and exotic "Within You Without You", "It's All Too Much" blends "physical love, ego loss and spiritual oneness as well as any song the Beatles recorded during their psychedelic phase". The song featured in Mojos 1997 list "Psychedelia: The 100 Greatest Classics", where Jon Savage described it as an "aural pleasure" that included "mad brass and handclaps so luscious that they sound like the chewing of a thousand cows". In July 2001, Uncut placed the song at number 43 on its list of "The 50 Greatest Beatles Tracks". Five year later, Mojo ranked it 85th on the magazine's