In a 2019 interview, Oates said that the cover had confused listeners, because it seemed unrelated to either Hall & Oates' musical style or their public persona. However, he noted that it was in keeping with other androgynous-looking album covers of the time, including The Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup and Rick Derringer's Spring Fever. He also noted that it was "pretty much the only album cover [of theirs] that anyone ever talks about, so in a way, if you just look at it in a purely analytical way, I guess it was very successful." In an interview for VH1's Behind the Music, Hall joked that the cover made him look like "the girl I always wanted to go out with".
