Every Shade of Love

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
All Music Guide to Soul	[10]
The Kansas City Star	[11]
Los Angeles Times	[12]
MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide	[13]
The Philadelphia Inquirer	[14]

The Star Tribune opined, "Musically, it's a funk-rock masterwork... Johnson comes up short in the lyrics department, however. His words about love show little depth and imagination."^[3] The Los Angeles Times called the album "a solid set of punchy dance grooves, distinguished by Johnson's castles-made-of-sand, Hendrix-derived fretwork... All of which only reinforces the suspicion that anything Prince can do, everyone else will do a year later."^[12] The New York Times said that Johnson "writes armor-plated funk in the style of Prince but without Prince's irony or sense of humor—the groove rules, and it's the message... This is nonstop dance music, with the aura of the last-set-Saturday-night; each instrument pegs a passing upbeat, and his instrumental sections seem to levitate."^[15]

The Philadelphia Inquirer labeled the guitar solo on "So Misunderstood" "a model of the funk form."^[14] The Evening Advertiser stated that Johnson "applies shards of frazzled electric guitar over crisp, jumping rhythms".^[16] The Independent praised the "fierce skeletal feeling" and "the impression that [the] music is being hammered together by androids on the spot".^[17] The Buffalo News called Johnson "one of the premier funk artists of the decade"; the paper later listed his album among the best of 1988.^[18][19] The Gloucestershire Echo deemed Every Shade of Love "warm, musicianly dance music par excellence."^[20]