What Is Life in the UK as perhaps the strongest of all of Harrison's singles. Writing in 1981, "NME" critic Bob Woffinden grouped "What Is LIfe" with "My Sweet Lord", "Isn't It a Pity" and "Awaiting on You All" as "all excellent songs". Reviewing the 2001 reissue of "All Things Must Pass", for "Rolling Stone", James Hunter wrote of how the album's music "exults in breezy rhythms", among which "the colorful revolutions of 'What Is Life' ... [move] like a Ferris wheel". The following year, in Rolling Stone Press's "Harrison" tribute book, David Fricke included "What Is Life" among his selection of "essential
What Is Life love song – perhaps a "lovingly crafted paen" to Harrison's wife Pattie, as Alan Clayson puts it – or a devotional song like many of Harrison's compositions. Ian Inglis writes that the song title suggests a "philosophical debate about the meaning of life", yet its rendering as ""what is my life"" in the choruses "reshapes [the meaning] completely". Theologian Dale Allison finds no religious content in "What Is Life" but notes the "failure of words to express feelings" implied in the opening line (""What I feel, I can't say""), a recurring theme of Harrison's spiritual songs such as "That Is