 The title of the album comes from the chorus of the single "No Letting Go", which helped make it Wonder's most successful album.In a positive review, "Vibe" magazine's Rob Kenner gave "No Holding Back" a four-out-of-five disc rating and called it "the right record at the right time" because of its mixture of innovative dancehall and decent R&B-pop songs.William Ruhlmann of AllMusic gave it four out of five stars and said that the reggae-inflected contemporary R&B album is generally in the same vein as "No Letting Go", which shows that "the only thing on Wonder's mind is love, and if he has nothing new to say about it, he nevertheless keeps things moving along nicely."