Music historian Luis Sanchez viewed the album as "the score to a film about what rock music doesn't have to be. For all of its inward-looking sentimentalism, it lays out in a masterful way the kind of glow and "sui generis" vision that Brian aimed to expand in a radical way with "Smile"." Music critic Tim Sommer, referencing other albums that are often labeled "masterpieces", such as "OK Computer" (1997), "The Dark Side of the Moon" (1973) or "Thick as a Brick" (1972), commented that "only "Pet Sounds" is written from the teen or adolescent point of view." It has been viewed by some writers as the best pop rock album of all time, including Sommer, who deemed it "the greatest album of all time, probably by about 20 or 30 lengths".