Critical reception

The Sound of Sunshine received mixed to positive reviews from most music critics. At Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

, which assigns a normalized

Standard score

In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...

 rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average

Weighted mean

The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...

 score of 61, based on 7 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Allmusic gave the album three and a half stars citing, "The Sound of Sunshine is the “seize the day” result to a reggae-pop, jam band beat, filled with bliss and gratitude plus a bit of swagger and some pointed political moments that remind you this isn’t Jack Johnson

Jack Johnson (musician)

Jack Johnson was born May 18, 1975 is an American folk rock singer-songwriter, surfer and musician known for his work in the soft rock and acoustic genres. In 2001, he achieved commercial success after the release of his debut album, Brushfire Fairytales. He has since released four more albums, a...

 or John Mayer

John Mayer

John Clayton Mayer is an American pop rock and blues rock musician, singer-songwriter, recording artist, and music producer. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and raised in Fairfield, Connecticut, he attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. He moved to Atlanta in 1997, where he refined his...

." Rolling Stone gave the album a mix review.

Rhapsody gave the album a favorable review adding, "Michael Franti is an intriguing artist. His mix of hip-hop beats, reggae and soulful folk-rock has influenced a seemingly endless parade of radio-ready singer-songwriters. And yet Franti himself has always remained on the mainstream's periphery. That's by design -- as The Sound of Sunshine clearly proves." Metromix gave it a mixed review, "The title track, which kicks off the record and then is revisited in a reworked version at the end, is the perfect bookend for this 11-track set that should only expand Franti's growing fan base. [...] While not all of the songs live up to the best three or four, the strength of those tunes makes it easier to forgive the weaker ones." Jon Dolan of Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B+ and said that it "sets evocations of hard-won happiness to similarly strummy, globally grooved hip-hop."

Charts

Chart (2010)	Peak position
Australian Albums Chart	34
U.S. Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...	17