year later, when reviewing It's Only Rock 'n Roll, Shaw considered Goats Head Soup to be the band's worst album up to that point, writing, "[it's the album] in which the rock & roll was insincere and the 'sensitive' material seemed forced and out of character." Retrospective reviews In his retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes: "Sliding out of perhaps the greatest winning streak in rock history, the Stones slipped into decadence and rock star excess with Goats Head Soup ... This is where the Stones' image began to eclipse their accomplishments, as Mick ascended to jet-setting celebrity and Keith slowly sunk deeper into addiction, and it's possible hearing them moving in both directions on Goats Head Soup, at times in the same song." Reviewing the 2009 reissue, Michael Hann of The Guardian gave the album a highly favourable review, stating that those who dismiss it in comparison to its predecessors are "missing a treat". Hann wrote that the album foreshadowed the band's sound of the late 1970s and 1980s, and that "Angie" and "Coming Down Again" are among the best songs in their entire catalogue. In 2015, Michael Gallucci of Ultimate Classic Rock felt that despite the inclusion of good tracks such as "Dancing with Mr. D", "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)" and "Star Star", the album represents the end of the Stones' "classic era". Reviewing the 2020 reissue, Gallucci commented that although the Stones did not "bottom out" until 1976's Black and Blue, Goats Head Soup is where their decline began. Although he found that the new mix enhances the album, he stated: "It's still sludgy, it still drags at points and it still occasionally comes off as lazy coasting by a band that felt it didn't have to try anymore now that it was on top of the world." David Browne of Rolling Stone writes that the original album failed to live up to its predecessor and "made it appear as if the Stones had gone overnight from the coolest, possibly greatest, rock and roll band to something less than that – just another big, commercial rock act". He felt that even throughout the new mixes, the band sounds "burnt out, regretful, melancholic, [and] even at times vulnerable". He concluded that with the reissue, Goats Head Soup "now feels historic". Jem Aswad of Variety similarly felt that the 1973 album ended their "near-peerless streak"