 In their 1975 book The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, NME critics Roy Carr and Tony Tyler similarly approved of Harrison's husky singing on "Dark Horse", praising it as "definitely a style to pursue". Like Carr and Tyler, Nicholas Schaffner rated "Dark Horse" among Harrison's finest compositions. Writing in The Beatles Forever, Schaffner opined that "Dark Horse" could have been one of Harrison's most successful singles had he "only waited to recoup his voice before committing it to tape". Seven years after his unfavourable review in the NME, Woffinden acknowledged that the song would have sounded "really good" had it been "graced with good vocals" and released in a "different context".
