DeRogatis compared the album's repeated listening value to a heightened psychedelic awareness, that its melodies "continue to reveal themselves after dozens of listens, just as previously unnoticed corners of the world reveal themselves during the psychedelic experience". On the subject of psychedelic records in the 1960s, Sean Lennon stated that "psychedelic music is a term that pretty much refers to these sort of epic, ambitious long-form records ... the reason "Pet Sounds" is considered a psychedelic journey or whatever is because it's like opening a door and stepping through and entering another world and you're in that other world for a period of time and then you come back."