""NME" called the song "painfully beautiful" in its review of "Binaural", while Keith Cameron of "NME" said in his review of the song, "The specifics of what "Light Years" is about—the death of a friend, apparently—get subsumed into the song's plangent distillation of regret, thereby rendering it perversely uplifting, a trick only the most accomplished and sincere bands can execute with anything approaching conviction.