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 (Avril Lavigne song) writing for "Rolling Stone" magazine, described "Wish You Were Here" as a "jangling power ballad". Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic marked "Wish You Were Here" as a highlight of the album, "Goodbye Lullaby". Al Fox, an editor of BBC Music, said that the song is one of the tracks from the album where "Lavigne actually manages to communicate some real sentiment". He also commented that it is "an unassuming strum-along". Bill Lamb of the website About.com found "interesting arrangements and musical settings" in the song. While reviewing "Goodbye Lullaby", Robert Copsey of Digital Spy concluded that the main theme of