"Paranoid Android" received acclaim from music critics. "NME" chose it as its "Single of the Week", and journalist Simon Williams described how the song "out like a plump man on a small sofa, featuring all manner of crypto-flamenco shufflings, medieval wailings, furiously wrenched guitars and ravishingly over-ambitious ideas. Possesses one of the most unorthodox 'axe' solos known to mankind." The style of the song was compared to that of Queen by "Rolling Stone"s Mark Kemp, while other critics, including David Browne of "Entertainment Weekly", Jon Lusk of the BBC and Simon Williams of "NME" wrote about its similarity to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". Years later, "NME" noted the song made "Bohemian Rhapsody" "look like child’s play." Williams described the song as being "not unlike 'Bohemian Rhapsody' being played backwards by a bunch of Vietnam vets high on Kings Cross-quality crack". Kemp praised the song's mix of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, which he believed were melded to produce "complex tempo changes, touches of dissonance, ancient choral music and a King Crimson-like melodic structure". Meanwhile Browne wrote of "celestial call-and-response vocal passages, dynamically varied sections, and Thom Yorke's high-voiced bleat". "The A.V. Club" called the song unforgettable and an "amazing epic single".