In The Dark Side of the Moon: The Making of the Pink Floyd Masterpiece, John Harris writes about the song:
"The first recorded work [Pink Floyd] released in the wake of Syd Barrett's exit was Richard Wright's almost unbearably whimsical 'It Would Be So Nice,' a single whose lightweight strain of pop-psychedelia—akin, perhaps, to the music of such faux-counterculturalists as the Hollies and the Monkees—rendered it a non-event that failed to trouble the British charts; as Roger Waters later recalled, 'No one ever heard it because it was such a lousy record.' Waters' own compositional efforts, however, were hardly more promising. 'Julia Dream', the single's B-side, crystallized much the same problem: though the band evidently wanted to maintain the Syd Barrett aesthetic, their attempts sounded hopelessly lightweight."