In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, music critic Lester Bangs called Hot August Night a ``fine presentation of the entire spectrum'' of Diamond's work and praised its music as ``great, pretentious, goofy pop'' with a melodramatic, ``hymn-like feeling''. In his review for Creem, Robert Christgau panned the album as a failed attempt at ``bad art'', and found Diamond's humor ``sententious'' and his country-western songs tasteless.
Lester Bangs
Robert Christgau