According to music critic Martha Bayles, Tommy did not mix rock with classical music, as its "rock opera" title may have suggested, but instead was "dominated by The Who's mature style: ponderous, rhythmically monotonous hard rock". Bayles argued that it was more acceptable to audiences than the art rock "concoctions" of the time because of the cultural climate during the late 1960s: "Tommy was considered more authentic, precisely because it consists of hard rock, rather than doctored-up Mussorgsky ... and avoids the typical pseudoromantic themes of art rock (fairy-tale bliss and apocalyptic angst) in favor of the more up-to-date subject of popular culture itself." High Fidelity magazine also characterized The Who's album as a "reasonably hard-rock version" of the opera.
