for its simplicity and charm, particularly after the LP was reissued by Warner Bros. in 1974. In his 1971 review of Surf's Up, Rolling Stones Arthur Schmidt referred to Wild Honey as "a masterpiece", "the most underrated" of the band's "post-surfer LPs", and "the last time they truly rocked their asses off, one cut after another." In a 1976 retrospective guide to 1967 for The Village Voice, Christgau felt Wild Honey is "so slight" but "perfect and full of pleasure". He argued that, "almost without a bad second", the album conveys "the troubled innocence of the Beach Boys through a time of attractive but perilous psychedelic sturm und drang. Its method is whimsy, candor, and carefully modulated amateurishness, all of which comes through as humor." Critic Geoffrey Himes called the record "10 wonderful celebrations of everyday life and a terrific Stevie Wonder cover. Wonder, though, never sang odes to clean air and refreshing wind or made boyish jokes about seeing a naked woman or brushing one's teeth." Record producer Tony Visconti listed Wild Honey as one of his 13 favorite albums and said that "I still refer to this record as a benchmark in the same way that I do Revolver." In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the record at number 410 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". It was also ranked second on Rolling Stones 2012 list of the "Coolest Summer Albums of All Time" list, with the editors praising the record's "hedonistic rock & roll spirit", "humor" and "pensive depth". Less favorably, Richie Unterberger wrote in his review for AllMusic that, apart from "Darlin, "Here Comes the Night" and the title track, most of Wild Honey was "inessential". He found the music "often quite pleasant, for the great harmonies if nothing else, but the material and arrangements were quite simply thinner than they had been for a long time." Sommer wrote that the album's original mono mix suffers from being "flat and peculiar". In the lyrics to the Beta Band's 1999 song "Round the Bend", Wild Honey is hailed for its "funny little love songs" although considered "probably not as good as something like Pet Sounds. In a negative review, Pitchfork critic Spencer Owen said only "one or two" songs succeed and the majority of Wild Honey is "not pretty" because of its R&B vein as "interpreted by white surfer boys", including "a Stevie