The album cover consists of a painting by American artist Bob Gill in which, as in Massot's film, two contrasting worlds are separated by a wall, with only a small gap allowing visual access between them.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and their television film Magical Mystery Tour[8][9] – Harrison led the group in terms of their shared philosophical direction,[10][11] as his bandmates followed him in embracing Transcendental Meditation under the guidance of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

[18] According to author Simon Leng: "The lack of dialogue left acres of room for music to speak, and a soupçon of cosmic apotheosis also helped ... Wonderwall touched on themes that would come to preoccupy George Harrison – critically, the objectification of celebrities and the shallowness of fame.

[31] Having used personnel from the Asian Music Circle in north London on his Beatles songs "Love You To" and "Within You Without You", in addition to his own sitar playing,[32][33] Harrison decided to record part of the soundtrack in Bombay, the centre of India's film industry,[34] in order to work with some of the country's best musicians.

[54] Barham attended this session and also contributed to some of the Western recordings for Wonderwall, playing piano, harmonium and flugelhorn, and providing orchestral arrangements for flutes, oboes and trumpet.

[29] The band were an instrumental group from Liverpool[56] that had toured with the Beatles in 1964[57] and comprised Colin Manley (guitar), Tony Ashton (keyboards), Phillip Rogers (bass) and Roy Dyke (drums).

[66] In Menon's recollection, following each day's recording session, Harrison returned to his rooms at the Taj Mahal Hotel and studiously documented his observations on the sounds and nuances of the various Indian instruments.

[19][nb 5] Well known for his theme tune to BBC television's Dixon of Dock Green,[64] Tommy Reilly played on the soundtrack after Harrison had asked Martin to suggest a good harmonica player.

[29] Author Ian Inglis writes of the effectiveness of "Drilling a Home": "its jangle piano instantly recreates the mood of a crowded saloon in a frontier town, or a Laurel and Hardy or Keystone Cops pursuit.

[115][nb 8] "Party Seacombe" includes a rock accompaniment that Clayson likens to the style of Pink Floyd,[64] and the song equally recalls the Beatles' instrumental "Flying",[103][116] with which it shares a twenty-bar blues structure.

[82] Leng views the piece as the soundtrack's "best collective work", adding: "This moving music was a close fit with the scene it covered – a mute passage in which the implied lust of the aging academic turns to compassion for Jane Birkin['s character], whose suicide attempt he witnesses ... Harrison's melody was strongly empathetic to the first appearance of human feeling in the film.

[82] The piece is an early example of Harrison blending Vedic chanting with Western harmony,[115] a concept that he explored further in his 1969–70 productions for the Radha Krishna Temple, and also in his post-Beatles songs such as "My Sweet Lord" and "Awaiting on You All".

[19] Although he had expected the film's producers to purchase the soundtrack rights and issue the album independently, they declined to do so,[35] leading Massot to suggest that Harrison release it on the Beatles' new label, Apple Records.

[29] Gill painted a picture in the style of Belgian surrealist René Magritte, showing a formally dressed man "separated by a huge red brick wall from a group of happy bathing Indian maidens", Spizer writes.

[142] Apple executive Derek Taylor, whom Harrison had invited to help run the Beatles' label in early 1968,[143] later wrote of Gill's submission: "It was a nice painting but missed the essence of hope.

[49] For the back cover of the LP, Harrison chose a photo of part of the Berlin Wall – a stock image from the Camera Press picture agency – which Kelly and Aldridge then manipulated and mirrored to represent a corner.

[146][nb 13] As a result, parts of "Ski-ing", "Cowboy Music" and "Wonderwall to Be Here" were included in Apple, a ten-minute film[149] designed to promote the new label at distributor EMI's international sales conferences.

[172] The reissue added three bonus tracks: the previously unreleased "Almost Shankara", titled after an epithet for the Hindu deity Shiva and based on a traditional Indian raga;[58] an alternate instrumental take of "The Inner Light", which opens with Harrison's instructions to the musicians at HMV Studios;[173] and "In the First Place" by the Remo Four".

[176] Coinciding with this reissue, the Wonderwall film and soundtrack was the subject of an event held at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, partly hosted by music journalist and television writer David Wild.

[183] Musician magazine said of the 1992 CD release: "Of all the Beatles-related esoterica, this 1968 soundtrack album is one of the choicest treasures ... a freewheeling tapestry of music and sound ... [and] a pastiche-like head trip with a mind all its own.

"[187] Billboard's reviewer rated it a "Vital Reissue" (signifying a re-release or compilation that merits "special artistic, archival, and commercial interest") and described the album as an "often enchanting sequence of 19 harmonious themes and tone poems" and an "intriguing treat".

[191] In the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, however, Mac Randall gave the release two-and-a-half stars (out of five) and grouped it with Electronic Sound as being "interesting, though only for established fans".

Bierman wrote that, while the Beatles held a familiar role as pioneers in rock music's new developments, the album showed Harrison breaking away and "creating fresh and unique sounds" of his own.

[114][nb 17] Reviewing the 2014 Apple Years remaster for Uncut, Richard Williams writes that Wonderwall Music represents "an exploded diagram of a Beatles album", which includes "[d]reamy miniature ragas", "a pub knees-up gatecrashed by a Dixieland band ('Drilling A Home')" and "the bones of early acid-rock songs ('Red Lady Too' and 'Party Seacombe')".

[193] New Zealand Herald critic Graham Reid considers "Dream Scene" to be "by far the most psychedelic and out-there piece by any Beatle to that time", adding that "towards the end you can almost anticipate Lennon's Revolution 9 coming in."

He says that, in response to the soundtrack restrictions, Harrison skilfully abbreviates the Indian raga form, "somehow capturing an essence, and condensing it to the fleeting, the elemental", while similarly presenting Western experimentalism "cloaked in a velvet glove".

"[35] Simon Leng considers Wonderwall Music to be "a companion in spirit" to Bill Evans' Conversations with Myself, due to the doubling of the lead instrument in some of the Indian pieces; he comments on the significance of Harrison recording in India in January 1968: "There were now three Beatles who held firm artistic visions.

Among the selections he highlights as transcending their soundtrack role, Inglis describes "Microbes" as "a beautiful example of Harrison's ability to create forlorn, mournful, yearning soundscapes" and "Greasy Legs" as "a delicate and charming composition".

[41] Inglis concludes of Harrison's debut solo album: "it provides a fascinating summary of the myriad patterns of musical activity whose fusions stimulated the growth of psychedelic, underground, and progressive scenes in the late 1960s, and it is a key moment in the development of his preparations for life after the Beatles.

[207][208] The band's 1996 single "Govinda" was a cover of a Harrison-produced song by the Radha Krishna Temple, and its B-side, "Gokula", used an identical guitar riff to the one on "Ski-ing",[205] resulting in a co-writing credit for Harrison.