"The Wall" was released in the UK and in the US on 30 November 1979. Coinciding with its release, Waters was interviewed by veteran DJ Tommy Vance, who played the album in its entirety on BBC Radio 1. Critical opinion of its content was mixed. Reviewing for "Rolling Stone" in February 1980, Kurt Loder hailed it as "a stunning synthesis of Waters's by now familiar thematic obsessions" that "leaps to life with a relentless lyrical rage that's clearly genuine and, in its painstaking particularity, ultimately horrifying." By contrast, "The Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau regarded it as "a dumb tribulations-of-a-rock-star epic" backed by "kitschy minimal maximalism with sound effects and speech fragments", adding in "The New York Times" that its worldview is "self-indulgent" and "presents the self-pity of its rich, famous and decidedly post-adolescent protagonist as a species of heroism". "Melody Maker" declared, "I'm not sure whether it's brilliant or terrible, but I find it utterly compelling."