announce that they will take us away on their Magical Mystery Tour and they do indeed. You must listen in stereo." Having been one of the few critics to review Sgt. Pepper unfavourably, Richard Goldstein of The New York Times complained that the Beatles were once more relying on studio artifice at the expense of true rock values and were overly focused on motif. Pairing "Magical Mystery Tour" with "Your Mother Should Know", he wrote: "Both ... are motifs disguised as songs. Both declare their moods (in stock musical phrases) but neither succeeds in establishing them. Instead, these cuts are as tedious and stuffy as an after-dinner speech." Rex Reed of HiFi/Stereo Review wrote a scathing critique in which he derided the group's singing and writing on the album, saying that "gimmicks don't compensate for confused musical ideas", and "Magical Mystery Tour" was "no more than a Radio City Music Hall parody. Nothing different or clever here." Robert Christgau of Esquire described the title song as "disappointing" and "perfunctory", although he conceded that the Beatles' new music should be viewed in the context of the television film. Writing in The Village Voice in 1976, in his retrospective on albums released during 1967, Christgau dismissed "Magical Mystery Tour" as "the lame theme to their worst movie" and said that along with "The Fool on the Hill", which followed it on the US LP, it had led listeners to overlook the quality of the remaining soundtrack songs. In his book Revolution in the Head, Ian MacDonald writes of the song: "While energetic, the result is manufactured, its thin invention undisguised by a distorted production tricked out with unconvincing time and tempo changes ... The main idea – 'Roll up', etc. – is shop-worn, while the contrasting section – 'The Magical Mystery Tour is coming', etc. – does little more than transpose the verse sequence of 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'." Writing for Rough Guides, Chris Ingham describes it as "the bare bones of a song accompanied by faintly tired brassy parping". Musicologist Walter Everett states: "I agree with those who call 'Magical Mystery Tour' a warmed-over 'Sgt. Pepper'-type fanfare/invitation to what's to follow … The transcendent modulation is not accompanied by compelling enough lyrics or sufficient melodic interest … to rise to greatness." Reviewing for Mojo in 2002, Charles Shaar Murray admired the song, saying that "[McCartney's] lead vocal at its