keyboards and a fantastic chorus." In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton viewed it as a "classy ballad from a new singer-songwriter". Pan-European magazine Music & Media felt it's a "brilliant soulful pop song with a slightly spacey production". A reviewer from Music Week called it "stylish", adding it as "both commercial and credible and should prompt a higher than average take-up for her aptly-named debut album". Ian McCann from New Musical Express said, "There's no hit here, but given the right bullshit production she could stick out the next 'Damn I Wish Etc'". Gerald Martinez from New Sunday Times wrote, "While the lyrics were evocative and interesting, it was the overall feel of the music, plus her low evocative voice, that had a quietly propulsive rhythm that made it special." Nick Duerden from Select described it as "sultry" and "soulful". Charles Aaron from Spin commented, "A British-Jamaican soul stylist (shades of Sade and Caron Wheeler) who makes her velvety voice go scratchy so we'll go weak in the knees, such as on the purportedly eco-conscious line: "Still we try to justify the waste for a taste of man's greatest adventure." Whatever. She could croon in Esperanto about the national debt and I'd swoon." Retrospective response AllMusic editor Roch Parisien complimented the song as a "hypnotic, fashionably retro-psych-soul beauty". In 2011, Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger wrote, "This, it seems to me, is part of what "Sleeping Satellite"'s articulating: a sense of disappointment bordering on betrayal that having dreamed of the Moon – or indeed, because it got there – humanity now seems confined to a slowly boiling Earth. This is potent, raw stuff and very difficult indeed to cover effectively in a pop song. And in truth Archer doesn't cover it effectively – the song's ambiguous and flowery, its emotional kick comes from Archer's self-belief more than anything you can read into it. But I have to say I like the idea that she tried." In 2012, Porcys ranked the song number 59 in their list of "100 Singles 1990–1999", declaring it as a "ideal pop-soul ballad". They added that "technically, "Sleeping Satellite" is an elegant blend of acoustics with synthetics, starting from the chic cascade, unloading the pomposity of a piece on a bridge built of psychedelic keyboard variations." Music video Two different music videos were made for the song; a European version and a US version.