Love. Angel. Music. Baby. - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

L.A.M.B. received generally positive reviews from contemporary pop music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 71, based on 22 reviews. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic called it "intermittently exciting and embarrassing", and Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times described it as "clever and sometimes enticing" but stated that it "doesn't quite add up". Jennifer Nine from Yahoo! Music referred to the album as "the hottest, coolest, best-dressed pop album of the year" and found it to be "sleek, shimmery, and dripping with all-killer-no-filler musical bling". In a review for About.com, Jason Shawhan noted that "his is an album that manages a near-impossible feat—it spans almost every genre of fun party and dance music you can name, yet remains a cohesive whole." Stylus Magazine's Charles Merwin said that Stefani was a contender to fill Madonna's role, "ut not enough to get seriously excited about her as the next great solo female careerist." Lisa Haines from BBC Music was more emphatic, stating that Stefani rivaled Madonna and Kelis. NME critic Krissi Murison stated that Stefani "shamelessly plunders" 1980s music but that the album was "one of the most frivolously brilliant slabs of shiny retro-pop anyone's had the chuzpah to release all year." John Murphy of musicOMH found the album "enjoyable, if patchy", but commented that it was too long. Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield deemed it "an irresistible party: trashy, hedonistic and deeply weird." The magazine later included the album in its list of the top fifty albums of 2004, placing it at number thirty-nine.

The album was generally criticized for its large number of collaborations and producers. The Guardian's Caroline Sullivan argued that although "others lend a hand it's very much Stefani's show"; however, most others disagreed. Jason Damas of PopMatters compared the album to a second No Doubt greatest hits album, and Pitchfork Media's Nick Sylvester felt that the large number of collaborators result in sacrificing Stefani's identity on the album. Anthony Carew from Neumu found that the album's fragmentation kept it from being "a bright-and-shiny pop-music tour-de-force". Most reviewers held that the collaborations prevented the album from having a solidified sound. Eric Greenwood wrote for Drawer B that "Stefani tries to be all things to all people here", but that the result "comes off as manipulative and contrived." Entertainment Weekly shared this opinion, stating that the album "is like one of those au courant retail magazines that resembles a catalog more than an old-fashioned collection of, say, articles."

Many reviewers focused on the album's light lyrical themes. Entertainment Weekly called the references to Stefani's clothing line "shameless" and stated that "each song becomes akin to a pricey retro fashion blurb", and Pitchfork Media said that "the Joker's free-money parade through Gotham City was a much more entertaining display of wealth, and he had Prince, not just Wendy & Lisa." Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine commented that the album's "fashion fetish gives the album a sense of thematic cohesiveness" but that the "obsession with Harajuku girls borders on maniacal". The Guardian disagreed with this perspective, arguing that "her affinity with Japanese pop culture yields a synthetic sheen that works well with the other point of reference, hip-hop." Robert Christgau gave the album a three-star honorable mention and said, "Turns out the problem wasn't ska per se--it was No Doubt."