Hollaback Girl - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

"Hollaback Girl" had a polarizing effect on music critics. Yahoo! Music's Jennifer Nine described it as a "stomping, stripped-back" track, and Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic noted that it had the "thumping, minimal beats" of The Neptunes. Richard Smirke of Playlouder called it "a trademark Neptunes hip-hop stomp." In his review of Love. Angel. Music. Baby., Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone gave the song a positive review, writing that "Stefani's gum-snapping sass brings out the beast in her beatmasters, especially the Neptunes in 'Hollaback Girl'." Blender listed it as the eleventh best song of 2005, and the song tied with Damian Marley's "Welcome to Jamrock" for number five on the 2005 Pazz & Jop, a survey of several hundred music critics conducted by Robert Christgau.

On the other hand, Jason Damas, in a review for PopMatters, felt that the song sounds "almost exactly like Dizzee Rascal", and added, "Lyrically, this is where Gwen sinks the lowest here, especially on a breakdown where she repeats, 'This shit is bananas / B-A-N-A-N-A-S!' several times". Eric Greenwood of Drawer B called the song "moronic and embarrassingly tuneless. I'd quote the lyrics, but they're so bad, I almost feel sorry for her. A 35-year-old woman singing about pom-poms and 'talking shit' in high school betrays such a delusional self-image that it's hard not to be taken aback. And on top of that, The Neptunes' beats are clunky and the production is senselessly bombastic." Nick Sylvester of Pitchfork Media also criticized the track, referring to it as a "Queen pastiche which has about as much club potential as a 13-year old with a milk moustache and his dad's ID". However, despite this initial review, Pitchfork Media would later place the track at number thirty-five on its list of the Top 50 Singles of 2005, and at number 180 on its list of The Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s. Maxim was unimpressed with the song, and in its October 2005 issue, published a list of the "20 Most Annoying Songs Ever" with "Hollaback Girl" in first place. In 2010, Matthew Wilkening of AOL Radio ranked the song at number sixteen on the list of the 100 Worst Songs Ever, commenting that "ften, Gwen puts a twist on a musical idea and nails it" with "Rich Girl", while "Hollaback Girl" "eminds us what we hated about high school."

"Hollaback Girl" was mocked on an episode of the animated television series Family Guy titled "Deep Throats"; after watching a VH1 special about Stefani, Brian Griffin states, "I don't know what a Hollaback Girl is. All I know is that I want her dead." The song was mocked again in another episode of Family Guy, this time in the guise of a parody of the feature film The Shawshank Redemption. In the film, Red (played by Morgan Freeman), upon hearing the duettino "Sull'aria" (from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro) for the first time, states that he has no idea what the women are singing about, but imagines it must be something beautiful. In the parody, Cleveland (playing the role of Red) hears "Hollaback Girl" and likewise claims to have no idea what Stefani is singing about—even though the lyrics are not in a foreign language (as is the issue in the film). Cleveland imagines it is "a foul, disease-ridden thing, that wears too much makeup to cover up the fact that it's a 47 year-old fish-dog".

The beginning of the song was used at the intro music for Mai's Blog, a series of mock-vlog entries by self-centred, mean-spirited Mai, broadcasted as a segment of the fourth season of the Israeli satire show Eretz Nehederet.

The song's bridge, in which Stefani exclaims "This shit is bananas" and then proceeds to spell bananas, was later parodied in an episode of the claymation television show Celebrity Deathmatch, in which Stefani spells out bananas, broccoli, and kumquat during an interview with Tally Wong.