The Globe and Mail wrote that Carter "has a very nice voice and, in fact, her singing abilities probably outweigh her songwriting ones," but concluded that "her versatile voice is being over-processed into pop slickness too much of the time."[2]Smash Hits called Wild Child "an accomplished American album of gentle, shuffling songs done Fleetwood Mac style. It's all a bit to effortless to be actually wild, but this album has a wistful, haunting beauty."[3]
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic writes that Wild Child "never transcends its time, except for the most hardcore soft-rock collectors."[1] Charles Donovan of PopMatters wrote of Wild Child in his tribute article to Valerie Carter that, "Her name appeared in the songwriting credits of roughly half the tracks. To some, it's the poor relation, with its disco-pop compromises, its studio wizards (James Newton Howard), its ultra-slick session players and commercial sheen. I've always liked it."[4]
Joe Marchese of The Second Disc writes of Wild Child, "The versatile singer-songwriter had a hand in five of its nine songs compared to just three on the previous LP, making Wild Child arguably a more personal album despite the sleek production. The lyrics to the ironically upbeat opening track, "Crazy," may have cut too close to the bone for an artist who battled her share of personal demons over the years: "I'm always gonna be this way/Reckless and crazy/That's probably true…" An authenticity, not to mention confidence, surges though the album."[5]
