Recalling the release of "Yellow Submarine" in his 1977 book "The Beatles Forever", Nicholas Schaffner described "It's All Too Much" as the only one of the new songs that appeared "to have taken more than a few hours to write". He added: " highlights include some searing Velvet Underground feedback and an unusually witty epigram that just about sums up the Spirit of '67: "Show me that I'm everywhere, and get me home for tea."" Rodriguez recognises the timing of the song's release on its public perception. While he notes that the recording was "positively anarchic" in mid-1967, by 1969, when it received widespread release, the song was "slightly less groundbreaking and a little more reactionary to the psychedelic movement that the band itself had helped popularize".