Rolling Stone (3/4/04, p.64) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[This album] finds him singing as the no-sweat superstar he's become."
Personnel includes: Kenny Chesney (vocals); B. James Lowry (acoustic, nylon, & bottle neck guitar); John Willis (acoustic, electric & nylon string guitar); Pat Buchanan, J.T. Corenflos, Clayton Mitchell, Dann Huff, John Jorgenson (electric guitar); Tim Hensley (banjo); Rob Hajacos (fiddle); Pat Buchanan (harmonica); Randy McCormick (piano, keyboards, synthesizer); John Hobbs (piano, Hammond B-3 organ); Gary Prim (piano); Melanie Cannon (background vocals); Uncle Cracker.
Unlike many of his peers, who work overtime to perpetuate hard-living country singer myths, Kenny Chesney never tries to be anything other than what he is. On "Keg in the Closet," for example, he reminisces in great detail about his fraternity days in the late 1980s, something no self-conscious outlaw wannabe would ever attempt. On the similarly nostalgic "I Go Back," he's not afraid to reference John Mellencamp's "Jack & Diane" and Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young" (overtly) and Don McLean's "American Pie" (via a Chevy/levee rhyme), songs that probably influenced him as much as anything coming out of Nashville. The truth-in-advertising mode continues on "Being Drunk's a Lot Like Loving You," one of WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN's best songs. Here the usual drinking-song metaphorical process is switched around, so that Chesney's using drunkenness to symbolize immersion in a relationship instead of reeling off clever lines about getting drunk. With Kenny Chesney, the pop side of the pop/country amalgam never seems abashed, and the fusion of the two seems easy and organic.