Hollaback Girl - Music and Structure

Music and Structure

"Hollaback Girl" is a moderately fast song, with a tempo of 110 beats per minute, and it is played in the key of D# minor. It combines old school hip hop with dance music, and—like the majority of pop music—is set in common time. The main chord pattern of the song alternates between B major and D♯ minor triads. Most of the harmonic content of the song revolves around a two-chord alternation which music theorists may regard as an L (leading tone) transformation, in which the root of the major chord is lowered by a half-step to form a second inversion minor chord on the third scale degree (see image to right), a slight tonicization of B major, but resolving back to D# minor by having the same A, a perfect fourth down from D#. This stepwise motion between B and A♯ highlights this chord change. It is in verse-chorus form with a bridge before the fourth and final chorus. The song features sparse instrumentation, primarily a minimal beat produced by drum machine. A guitar plays the song's riff, a six-note pattern as Stefani repeats "this my shit" during the chorus, and a brass section joins during the second chorus. In part because of its cheerleading motif, it drew comparisons to Toni Basil's 1982 song "Mickey".