"At My Most Beautiful" was written as a "gift" from Stipe to his bandmates, to indulge their fondness of "Pet Sounds". Commenting on the song's musical similarities to the work of the Beach Boys in his book "Inside Classic Rock Tracks", Rikki Rooksby wrote that "At My Most Beautiful" was "a tribute to that sound, at once conveying something of R.E.M. "and" Brian Wilson. In other words, it's not so much like The Beach Boys that it's a pastiche, but sufficiently like them to be a musical homage." He states that the song's use of an F chord with an A bass note in the verse follows the example of Brian Wilson's use of inversions on his band's "Pet Sounds" album, and that the cellos at the end heightens the section's resemblance to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations".