 "She's So Unusual" was voted the eleventh best album of the year in "The Village Voice"s annual Pazz & Jop critics poll for 1984.In a retrospective review for AllMusic, music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called the album a "giddy mix of self-confidence, effervescent popcraft, unabashed sentimentality, subversiveness, and clever humor".Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine called it "a pop classic".