The album was met with positive reviews from magazines such as "Smash Hits", "People", and "Rolling Stone". Writing for the latter in December 1979, Debra Rae Cohen said that objections to the band's stylistic appropriations of new wave and reggae are "rendered moot by the sheer energy of the band's rhythmic counter-punching". In "The Village Voice"s year-end Pazz &amp; Jop poll of American critics nationwide, "Reggatta de Blanc" was voted the 35th best album of 1979. Robert Christgau, the poll's creator and the "Voice"s chief critic, was lukewarm about the album in "" (1981): "The idea is to fuse Sting's ringing rock voice and the trio's aggressive, hard-edged rock attack with a less eccentric version of reggae's groove and a saner version of reggae's mix. To me the result sounds half-assed. And though I suppose I might find the 'synthesis' innovative if I heard as much reggae as they do in England, it's more likely I'd find it infuriating." In 1981, the album's title track earned the band a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Greg Prato said that the band's intense touring schedule leading up to the album had made their unique reggae rock fusion sharper, leading to a work that was "much more polished production-wise and fully developed from a songwriting standpoint", but also "more sedate" than their first album.