The Unforgettable Fire
Upon the release of "No Line on the Horizon", many critics called "Magnificent" one of the album's highlights. "Q" wrote that it "echoes "The Unforgettable Fire"'s opening track "A Sort of Homecoming" in its atmospheric sweep", also labelling it as a "slow-building anthem with the ambience of "The Unforgettable Fire' and a re-boot of 'Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses.'" In Allmusic's review of the album, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said that on "Magnificent", U2 "strike that unmistakable blend of soaring, widescreen sonics and unflinching openhearted emotion that's been their trademark, turning the intimate into something hauntingly universal". "Mojo" praised the song, noting the song's "martial snare drums ratchet the Edge's vertiginous delayed guitar figures across a rock landscape that this band realised to near perfection c. "The Unforgettable Fire" and which they've now updated with no loss of awe". "Blender" called the song a "rocker" and "yet another hymn to the powers of love" in which the band "achieve liftoff". NME was critical of the song, calling it "astonishingly uninteresting", adding that it "sounds like [it was] reconstituted from the ..."Atomic Bomb" sessions".