Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd album) still sounds unconvincing in its ponderous sincerity and displays a critical lack of imagination in all departments." However, Robert Christgau wrote in "The Village Voice": "The music is not only simple and attractive, with the synthesizer used mostly for texture and the guitar breaks for comment, but it actually achieves some of the symphonic dignity (and cross-referencing) that "The Dark Side of the Moon" simulated so ponderously." He later wrote: "My favorite Pink Floyd album has always been "Wish You Were Here", and you know why? It has soul, that's why – it's Roger Waters's lament for Syd, not my
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd album) idea of a tragic hero but as long as he's Roger's that doesn't matter." According to Acclaimed Music, "Wish You Were Here" is the 185th most ranked record on critics' all-time lists. In 2012, it was voted 211th on "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2015, it was chosen as the fourth greatest progressive rock album by "Rolling Stone". In 1998 "Q" readers voted "Wish You Were Here" the 34th greatest album of all time. In 2000 the same magazine placed it at number 43 in its list of the 100 Greatest British