[4] Can't Buy Me Love took seventeen years to complete, from Gould signing his book deal with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, to its publication by Harmony in 2007.

[10] In her 2016 study of the band's historiography, Erin Torkelson Weber comments that Gould's biography proved more impressive to "knowledgeable readers" than Spitz's, which suffered from an abundance of factual errors and an opinionated approach that revealed the author's bias.

"[12] In his review for USA Today, Anthony DeBarros wrote that while "another book about The Beatles – perhaps the single most-dissected band in the history of rock 'n' roll – seems a superfluous exercise", Gould's work "excels by providing what's been missing from many biographies: context".

He described it as a "galvanizing read" and complimented the author's "insightful" assessments of some of the songs, predicting that "All [readers] will enjoy the tale of four extraordinary men and a band whose music can only be compared to itself.

"[14] Writing for The Guardian, author Jon Savage praised Gould for "retell[ing] this mythic fable in a way that makes it seem new again" through the combination of biography, musicological analysis and cultural context.

He concluded: "With only minor mistakes of emphasis and quirks of taste, Gould's book is an essential addition to Beatle literature, ranking up there with [Ian] MacDonald's magisterial Revolution in the Head and Devin McKinney's brilliant Magic Circles.

"[9] In Britain's Record Collector magazine, Terry Staunton described Can't Buy Me Love as "endlessly fascinating, with the potential to become indispensable" on a par with Savage's England's Dreaming, adding that Gould's music critiques were the equal of MacDonald's "landmark Revolution in the Head".