Reviewing Under the Pink for Rolling Stone, Marie Elsie St. Léger opined that the album "doesn't match Amos' riveting, piano-only live performances, but it sure comes close", calling it an "honest reporting of a life fraught with turmoil and disappointment." Chicago Tribune critic Brad Webber noted "the latent feminism" throughout Under the Pink and highlighted Amos's "tough veneer" and "genuine" emotion, while USA Todays Edna Gundersen said that Amos had made "big strides" with an album that "finds her blasting patriarchy and breaking free of religious repression, victimhood and sexual guilt." Jean Rosenbluth of the Los Angeles Times, however, found Amos's lyrics "so obtuse—in an overreaching stab at profundity—that they're almost meaningless", a sentiment echoed by John Harris of NME, who likened listening to the album to being "locked in a semantic castle".
Reviewing Under the Pink for Rolling Stone, Marie Elsie St. Léger opined that the album "doesn't match Amos' riveting, piano-only live performances, but it sure comes close", calling it an "honest reporting of a life fraught with turmoil and disappointment." Chicago Tribune critic Brad Webber noted "the latent feminism" throughout Under the Pink and highlighted Amos's "tough veneer" and "genuine" emotion, while USA Todays Edna Gundersen said that Amos had made "big strides" with an album that "finds her blasting patriarchy and breaking free of religious repression, victimhood and sexual guilt." Jean Rosenbluth of the Los Angeles Times, however, found Amos's lyrics "so obtuse—in an overreaching stab at profundity—that they're almost meaningless", a sentiment echoed by John Harris of NME who likened listening to the album to bein,g "locked in a semantic castle".