Easily the best of her four albums (yes, there was life before Ally), By 7:30 is a confident and strong collection of songs that finds Shepard wrestling with unrequited love in all the wrong and — refreshingly — right places; she even tells one lover, "You're like a wave of heaven, and you're breaking on me." An acknowledged Carole King and Laura Nyro devotee, Shepard employs the same cascading melodies and jagged vocal spikes that Tori Amos also draws from on songs such as the title track, "Clear," and "Sail on By," while she's equally engaging in the quieter, piano-dominated surroundings of "Cross to Bear," "Baby, Don't You Break My Heart Slow" (a duet with Indigo Girl Emily Saliers), and "Soothe Me." Shepard can do the middle of the road well too; "Confetti" is prototypical uptempo pop with a chorus that's still hanging in your ears several songs later. So if there's justice in the world, By 7:30 — which the songstress co-produced with Mitchell Froom — will bring Shepard success in her own right and bring her an audience to sing to other than lawyers in (and out) of love.
— Gary Graff (Wall Of Sound)
all her "that singer from Ally McBeal" and everyone knows who you're talking about. But call her Vonda Shepard and it's "Huh?" That's a pity, since Shepard is an exceptional songwriter who pulls her lyrics from an open vein and delivers them in a voice as powerful and evocative as you'll find anywhere in the Lilith generation. In other words, Shepard as Shepard is a hell of a lot better than the soft-sheen bar singer she plays on McBeal and its attendant soundtrack album (which, by the way, has sold more than four million copies worldwide).