[18] Lead singer Tony Hadley wrote in his 2004 autobiography To Cut a Long Story Short that the mostly unimpressive numbers "hardly squared with our hopes of global success".

As a guest critic for Smash Hits magazine, singer and Parade cover model Samantha Fox opined that it was not very good.

[20] Stuart Bailie of Record Mirror described it as "crummy", explaining, "There's a mid-tempo ordinariness about the whole thing, with Steve Norman playing that same old sax solo and a very indifferent vocal from Tony Hadley.

1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On)" and liked Kemp's "funky guitar picking", Norman's "sexy sax work" and Hadley's "restrained" vocals.

[23] In a retrospective review of the Through the Barricades album, Dan LeRoy of AllMusic wrote, "Most of the tunes demand guitar and drum bombast; instead, the riff-rocking 'Cross the Line' and 'Fight for Ourselves', in particular, are undercut by the polite-sounding rhythm section.