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 discussed the song's composition: "'Shake It Off' was just like ... That comes from that style of I guess [Usher's] 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. Critical reception "Shake It Off" was met with generally positive reviews from music critics. AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine picked "Shake It Off" as a top pick from the album. Michael Paoletta, writing for Billboard, gave the song a positive review, complimenting its lyrics, production and Carey's vocals. He concluded his review with his assurance that the song would be a success, writing "After 'We Belong Together' brought her back to radio big time, 'Shake It Off' will take Carey's good fortune to the next step." Some critics compared the song heavily to Usher's material from his 2004 album, Confessions. Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine wrote "Mariah too heavily bites on the styles of her successors: Usher by way of Dupri on 'Shake It Off'," while Dan Gennoe of Yahoo! Music UK said