Stone Album Guide compared "The Sign" to Gloria Gaynor's 1978 song "I Will Survive", writing that it was "the wisest, catchiest, most triumphant kiss-off". Chuck Eddy of LA Weekly labeled the music video as "fun", but described "The Sign" as undistinctive. Mario Tarradell from Miami Herald opined that the song was "annoyingly chirpy". Alan Jones from Music Week wrote that Ace of Base's attempts to imitate "All That She Wants" by using a "shuffling reggae beat" was "less charming and effective", but believed "The Sign" was "bright enough" to chart in the top 20 on the UK Singles Chart. Tom Doyle from Smash Hits gave "The Sign" two out of five in his review, stating that the reggae beat, saxophone, and tune were similar to "All That She Wants". Writing for Entertainment Weekly, David Thigpen described it as "a wasteland of neutered hip-hop and lumbering dance rhythms", criticizing Linn Berggren's vocals as "inert" and "colorless". Barry Walters for the San Francisco Examiner stated that the song "blankly chirps". Legacy Amos Barshad of Vulture stated in his retrospective review of the band's 1993 studio album The Sign that "The Sign" "is still a very good pop song" despite being outdated in production techniques, stating that it sounded analog. American singer Katy Perry acknowledged in a 2009 MTV News interview that the song, along with the Cardigans' 1996 song "Lovefool", served as an inspiration for her recordings. John Seabrook, a staff writer at The New Yorker, praised the song in his 2015 book The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, stating that "the song is a three-minute, thirty-second sonic thrill rise of Swedish funk." He also acknowledged that the song's success was due to three people: Denniz Pop, Clive Davis, and Clive Calder. Seabrook concluded that it had an influential impact on pop music, suggesting that "a Swedish hit factory for US and British artists had never happened before. ... 'The Sign' really was the sign that that could happen". Annie Zaleski from The A.V. Club wrote that the song "is full of cheerful shade", noting that it combined a "breezy reggae vibe" with 1990s Europop. Bob Waliszewski of Plugged In noted that the song's lyrics "demonstrate[s] strength in the wake of romantic rejection". Idolator ranked "The Sign" at number one on their ranking of The 50 Best Pop Singles of 1994, with author Robbie Daw writing that it "was a straight-up