Ocean Avenue received mostly positive reviews from music critics, some of whom commented on Sean Mackin's violin playing and songwriting quality.

"Way Away" and "Only One" appeared high on the US Alternative Airplay chart; "Ocean Avenue" peaked at number 37 on the US Hot 100, and within the top 100 in Scotland and the UK alongside "Way Away".

[9] Frontman Ryan Key also reasoned that listeners were unable to purchase One for the Kids in stores due to a lack of distribution and wanted a label that could rectify that.

[11] Two days after its release, bassist Warren Cooke left the band, citing personal reasons;[14] violinist Sean Mackin said there was in-fighting between them up to eight months before this occurred.

[15] In October and November 2002, the band supported No Use for a Name on their headlining US tour,[16] and played a few shows with the Starting Line and Park.

The band had one song, "Boxing Me", that their A&R person felt sounded like a single, but the members considered the track "too poppy" and dropped it.

Neal Avron produced and recorded the album with assistance from engineers Ryan Castle and Travis Huff.

[20] The sound of Ocean Avenue has been described musically as pop-punk[21][22][23] and punk rock,[24] and has drawn comparisons to Blink-182 and Simple Plan.

Key typically comes up with a melody line and a chord progression, which he then shows to the rest of the band, who build upon it from this bare form.

[26] The band experimented with country and folk-stylized rock in songs like "Empty Apartment", "View from Heaven", and "One Year, Six Months".

Christine Choi and Rodney Wirtz played cello and viola, respectively, on "Way Away", "Breathing", "Empty Apartment", "Only One", and "Believe"; Mackin and Avron wrote the string arrangement.

He had written the guitar riff to it in a dressing room at the Glass House venue in Pomona, California while on a tour.

[29] "Ocean Avenue" is anchored around a distorted staccato punk rock guitar riff;[30] in the song's lyrics, Key uses the person he is singing to as a metaphor for Jacksonville.

[35] The music came about from Key using different amplifiers to achieve a different sound, utilizing a tremolo effect played through a Fender Twin amp.

[29] "Twentythree" is about growing up,[36] while the country-influenced song "View from Heaven",[37] with additional vocals from Alieka Wijnveldt,[20] discusses the death of a girlfriend.

[29] "Inside Out" is a mid-tempo rock track that is followed by "Believe", a homage to emergency service members who died in the September 11 attacks.

[29] In March 2003, Mosely left Yellowcard citing personal reasons and was replaced by Alex Lewis,[39] who was best friends with Harper and Mackin.

[41] The artwork features a blurry photo of a high school girl in front of a setting sun in California.

[47] The Japanese edition included "Firewater", "Hey Mike", and the acoustic versions of "Way Away" and "Avondale" as bonus tracks;[48] "Way Away" was released on radio the same day.

[64] After appearing at the main stage on Warped Tour, the band performed at the MTV Video Music Awards.

[70] Ocean Avenue was pressed on vinyl for the first time in 2011 through Hopeless Records, individually[71] and as part of the box set 2002–2011 Collection.

[75][76] "Way Away", "Ocean Avenue", "Empty Apartment", "Life of a Salesman", "Only One", and "Believe" were included on the band's first compilation album Greatest Hits (2011).

Entertainment Weekly writer Joe Caramanica said the band laid "somewhere between A Simple Plan and blink-182, which is to say they're resilient enough not to whine, but too young to have a reason to anyhow".

"[25] Elizabeth Bromstein of Now wrote that there was "a certain amount of drive" to the album, which offered "some neat guitar sounds as well as some nice arrangements".

[27] PopMatters contributor Stephen Haag said the album "arrives at a time when pop punk's audience is maturing beyond the typical puerile fare that too many bands offer.

"[24] In spite of Mackin's violin giving the band some diversity from their peers, there was "still a fair share of bog standard punk rock, run of the mill stuff".

[24] Drowned in Sound reviewer Nick Lancaster dismissed Yellowcard as "merely the latest band to hop off the boy-band-punk conveyor belt for their fifteen minutes of minor fame", though he wrote that it was "[n]ever actively bad, but offensive in its lack of imagination and drive".

The Spokesman-Review writer Cameron Adamson was initially sceptical of the use of violin, but "was pleasantly surprised"; as he listened to more of the album, he noted that the "energy that is felt from the start never dies".

[82] AllMusic reviewer MacKenzie Wilson wrote that the album "delivers despite of its catchy recipe", with Mackin's "impressively skilled" violin playing that helped Yellowcard "in making something sound original and fresh".

[37] Madsen wrote that as integral was Key's vocals and Harper's guitar were to the band, Mackin's violin was "more than just a gimmick and absolutely should not be written off as one".