In 2020, the album was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry.

Numerous friends of Browne's, including Dan Fogelberg, Don Henley, and JD Souther contributed harmony vocals.

[7] Browne has publicly acknowledged that the cover art for Late for the Sky was inspired by the 1954 painting L'Empire des Lumieres ("Empire of Light"), by Belgian surrealist René Magritte.

Lest the jacket appear too funereal, a mood-defusing photo of a relaxed Jackson, almost smiling and looking as though he has a surprise to share, occupies a small square of the back cover.

"[9] Reviewing for Rolling Stone in 1974, Stephen Holden highly praised the album, calling it Browne's "most mature, conceptually unified work to date" and saying that the "...open-ended poetry achieves power from the nearly religious intensity that accumulates around the central motifs; its fervor is underscored by the sparest and hardest production to be found on any Browne album yet... as well as by his impassioned, oracular singing style.

"[16] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, William Ruhlmann describes the themes of the album as "love, loss, identity, apocalypse", similar to Browne's debut album, feeling that Browne "delved even deeper into them...Yet his seeming uncertainty and self-doubt reflected the size and complexity of the problems he was addressing in these songs, and few had ever explored such territory, much less mapped it so well.

The metaphorical complexity of 'Fountain of Sorrow' and the clear-eyed poignancy of 'For a Dancer' would be a tough act to follow...when his songwriting is sharp, the mellowing trend in his music dulls the impact.