This subtle approach had continued a precedent set after his 1974 North American tour with Ravi Shankar, when Harrison's spiritual pronouncements had attracted scorn from many music critics.

[19] Leng considers "Writing's on the Wall" to be the first song in which Harrison "equates music with spirituality" and explicitly evokes Nada Brahma, a concept espoused by Indian classical musicians such as Shankar that means "sound is God".

Inglis writes that, like Borges in his poem "Limits", Harrison fully accepts the impermanence of life and so challenges Dylan Thomas's contention (in "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night") that the inevitability of death should be defied until the end.

[25][26] Aside from Harrison, who also served as producer,[27] the musicians at the sessions were Neil Larsen and Gary Brooker (both on keyboards), Ray Cooper (percussion), Willie Weeks (bass) and Jim Keltner (drums).

[44] The song was also issued as the B-side of the lead single, "All Those Years Ago", which Harrison wrote as a tribute to his former Beatles bandmate John Lennon,[45] who had been fatally shot in New York City on 8 December 1980.

[49] Although unimpressed with Somewhere in England generally,[54][55] Harry Thomas of Rolling Stone wrote: "Harrison has achieved the supreme gift of communicating, through the abstract medium of music (the words are secondary), a vision of the spiritual world he's glimpsed in his mystical explorations.

"[57] Record Mirror's Mike Nicholls paired the song with "That Which I Have Lost", saying their lyrics were "righteous homilies advocating his own God-head – one Sri Krishna, apparently", although he still found the tracks "simple yet unpatronising" and recognised a "quiet, inoffensive unpretentiousness" throughout the album.

[58] In a gesture that Simon Leng terms "unprecedented", Harrison authorised the inclusion of "Writing's on the Wall", together with "Life Itself" and "That Which I Have Lost", on the 1993 audio release of Deepak Chopra's bestselling book Ageless Body, Timeless Mind.

[59] The track accompanies a passage read by Chopra,[59] who became a friend of Harrison's in the mid 1980s and helped effect a reconciliation between the singer and his former meditation teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in 1991.

"[63] While he considers both the 1980 and the 1981 versions of the album to be "mixed bags", former Mojo editor Mat Snow pairs "the gentle, thoughtful 'Writing's on the Wall'" with "Life Itself", as the two tracks that "stand out as deeply felt returns to singing of his spirituality".

[66] Author Elliot Huntley describes the track as "pleasant" but seemingly "unfinished", and suggests that it would have been better served with a full Indian classical arrangement in the style of Harrison's Beatles composition "Within You Without You".