Hollaback Girl
| Hollaback Girl | |
|---|---|
| Gwen Stefani | |
| publication | March 21, 2005 |
| length | 3:19 |
| Genre (s) | Pop , hip-hop |
| text |
G. Stefani , P. Williams , C. Hugo |
| music | The Neptunes |
| album | Love. Fishing rod. Music. Infant. |
Hollaback Girl is the name of the third single from Love. Fishing rod. Music. Infant. , a solo album by Gwen Stefani from 2004. The single was released in March 2005 and reached number 1 in the USA and in several international charts a few weeks later . According to the Guinness Book of Records, it was the first single ever to be over 1 million times downloaded. The video for Hollaback Girl won the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards for Best Choreography .
Music and lyrics
The piece was written by Gwen Stefani and Pharrell Williams when the album was largely finished. The text itself is not very heavy-handed and peppered with strong expressions, including 38 times the word shit ('shit'). In the US public media only one version is played in which these passages are hidden.
The title Hollaback Girl has no traditional meaning in the English language. The term Hollaback has only been documented in various pieces of music since 2001. Gwen Stefani has never explained the word, in the context of the Stefani single the term is used to denote a girl who has heard that someone else is talking badly about her and she will no longer take it. In the English-speaking world, several variants of the derivation are discussed, including who hollers back ('someone who roars back '), and in the negative of the piece, “ain't no hollaback girl” someone who doesn't just leave it at words, or rather in another variant that you not only yell back, but start the roar yourself.
At the end of the second stanza there is an allusion to the title Another One Bites the Dust by Queen : A melody section of the title is used in the background and the text line “that's right, I'm the last one standing, another one bites the dust “ sung.
Charts
| Charts | Top ranking | Weeks |
|---|---|---|
| Chart placements | ||
 Germany (GfK)
|
3 (16 weeks) | 16 |
 Austria (Ö3)
|
5 (22 weeks) | 22nd |
 Switzerland (IFPI)
|
6th (28 weeks) | 28 |
 United Kingdom (OCC)
|
8th (19 weeks) | 19th |
 United States (Billboard)
|
1 (31 weeks) | 31 |
Web links
- Lyrics with explanations (English)
- Music video on YouTube