Say Say Say waste[d] the rest of the album on bathos and whimsy". The "Los Angeles Times" Paul Grein also reviewed the McCartney album and opined that the singer had redeemed himself with the success of the "spunky" song "but plunged back into wimpdom with 'No More Lonely Nights'". Journalist Whitney Pastorek compared the song to McCartney's 1982 duet with Stevie Wonder, "Ebony and Ivory". She asserted that "Say Say Say" was a better song, and had a better "though slightly more nonsensical" music video, adding that the song had no "heavy-handed social content". Penn State's "The Daily Collegian" described the track as
A Toot and a Snore in '74 Harry Nilsson's latest album, "Pussy Cats", when Paul and Linda McCartney dropped in after the first night of the sessions, aka "the Jim Keltner Fan Club Hour", at Burbank Studios on 28 March 1974. They were joined by Stevie Wonder, Harry Nilsson, Jesse Ed Davis, May Pang, Bobby Keys and producer Ed Freeman for an impromptu jam session. Lennon was in his "lost weekend", separated from Yoko Ono and living in Los Angeles with Pang. Although he and McCartney hadn't seen each other in three years and had lashed out at each other in the press, according to Pang they