Shake IT Off - Composition

Composition

"Shake It Off" is a mid-tempo R&B and pop song with a hip-hop backbeat and a "thumping", sparse production. Written and produced by Carey, Jermaine Dupri, Bryan-Michael Cox and Johntá Austin, the song drew comparisons to several productions from Usher's 2004 album, Confessions. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by W.B.M. Music Corporation, "Shake It Off" is set in common time with a tempo of 66 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of D major with Carey's vocal range spanning from the low-note of A₃ to the high-note of D₅. The song follows in the chord progression of Bm₇–Am₇–Gmaj₇ The verses and chorus remain in a narrow voice range, until according to Jon Pareles of The New York Times, Carey "gives herself a few of her old sky-high notes as a background flourish" near the song's end. According to Carey's album guide in Rolling Stone, Dupri leaves his trademark on the album's best tracks including "Shake It Off", with the track's production and beat described as "syncopated" and "bouncy". Lyrically, the song features the protagonist confronting her unfaithful lover, and breaking up with him via an answering machine. She continues to pack her most valuable possessions and move on with her life. Several critics highlighted the song's lyrics as its best facet, and described them as a strong female's anthem. While featuring a message of female strength, the song lyrics were described as "goofy" and "fun" by Larry Katz from the Boston Herald. Reading "Just like the Calgon commercial / I really gotta get up out of here", Carey tells her lover that she is leaving him, making a "clever" reference to a commercial. In regards to the latter lyrics, Lawrence Farber from the Windy City Times wrote "they are a playful approach to bitterness—and, more specifically, a cheatin' bad apple." She then sings "By the time you get this message / It's gonna be too late / So don't bother paging me / 'Cause I'll be on my way", establishing that the relationship is over, and that he shouldn't even try to mend the situation. She also makes reference to his infidelity, "with this one and that one / By the pool, on the beach, in the streets." In an interview with MTV News, Dupri described the song's composition:

"'Shake It Off' was just like ... That comes from that style of I guess Confessions and just that bounce. It's got a lot of ingredients to it because I never thought that Mariah could make a bouncy type of record. When you hear that song — the whole bounce of the record and the way she's flipping it and the stuff she talking about ... I knew that record was gonna go just because you never heard Mariah talk about this stuff. ... She's like, 'I packed up my Louis Vuitton.' She took it really on the ghetto side. I knew that was gonna strike people. Either it was gonna hit them in a wrong way or they was gonna love it.