Mikael Wood of Los Angeles Times rated it two-and-a-half stars out of five and wrote: "Listening to these songs one after the other — as they might have been presented on a handmade mixtape from the mid-1990s — you think about the shift in tone that’s taken place in pop since then, from that era’s once-ubiquitous slacker vibe to today’s fixation on harder-better-faster-stronger. Young Adult seems to side with that earlier mind-set, but perhaps not: The album closes with a handful of elevator-music renditions of [popular] tunes, that’s easy to hear as a kind of requiem for irony."[3] Reviewing for AllMusic, James Christopher Monger summarised: "Young Adult should find even the most jaded Generation X'ers reaching for their fire sticks and flannels."[4] Writing for New York Daily News, Jim Farber wrote that the soundtrack "offers both a vehicle for retro fun and an implicit send-up of the character's inability to move on".[5]
Comparing the similarities with Reitman's Juno, Al Alexander of The Patriot Ledger praised its soundtrack as "evocative, featuring some of the best music from the late 1980s and early ‘90s. Bands like The Replacements, Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr. and Teenage Fanclub, whose jangly pop masterpiece, “The Concept,” plays an integral part in the plot."[6] Oliver Lyletton of IndieWire wrote that the soundtrack "has a tastefully curated mix of ‘90s cuts"; he further praised Messina's muzak-like rendering of the 90's hits as the clever choice in the film's music.[7]
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