[3] A review of the song from AllMusic stated: "Few artists could conjure a sense of yearning for an absent lover the way Lucinda Williams does in 'Right in Time', making physical the painful nature of unsatisfied and overwhelming longing, [the song] moves to a feeling of immediacy as the chorus enters, shifting the tone from longing, twangy guitars propelling the chorus--'The way you move, it's right in time/It's right in time with me.'

The song then segues into the more intimate setting of Lucinda's private world, where time slows down to a stagger, 'I take off my watch and my earrings/My bracelets and everything/Lie on my back and moan at the ceiling...Think about you and that long ride/I bite my nails, I get weak inside/Reach over and turn off the light/Oh my baby' drawn out in such a low, aching moan that the return of the guitars and closing chorus is a palpable release.

[6] Pitchfork wrote that the song includes some of her "most irreducible, eloquent poetry—'Not a day goes by I don’t think about you/You left your mark on me, it’s permanent, a tattoo'—before becoming a moaned narrative of a woman alone in bed, pleasuring herself.

"[8] In a five-star-out-of-five review of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road for Rolling Stone, Robert Christgau observed "from the album's very first lines-in which the flat 'Not a day goes by I don't think about you' sets up the ambush of 'You left your mark on me, it's permanent [pause, we need a rhyme fast] a tattoo [gotcha!

]', which is instantly trumped by 'Pierce the skin, the blood runs through' and then swoons into a forlorn, unutterably simple 'Oh my baby'-Williams's every picked-over word and effect has something to say.