Format Digital download Genre Dance-pop
power pop Label Syco | Recorded 2016 Length 4:06 | |
Released 16 October 2016 (2016-10-16) | ||
"Shout Out to My Ex" is a song by British girl group Little Mix. It is the first single from their fourth studio album Glory Days (2016) and premiered on The X Factor live shows on 16 October 2016, becoming the band's fourth number-one single in the United Kingdom. The track was written by Edvard Førre Erfjord, Henrik Michelsen, Camille Purcell, Iain James and Little Mix, with production credits from Erfjord and Michelsen under their production monikers, Electric. The song musically is a dance-pop and power pop song that talks about not showing feelings of regret after breaking up with a boyfriend and wishing well to the new couple.
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Critical reception
Idolator's Rachel Sonis described the song as a "kiss-off anthem at its finest" and remarked that it felt like "a confident comeback for the group". Bruno Russell, from The Edge also praised the group, calling the song 'fierce and sassy', although he remarked that previous singles trumped this release. Giving the single 4-stars, Russell said that Shout Out to My Ex composes a "memorable beat and refrain that are well-constructed epitomes of previous successes. This is a very promising teaser of a feistier, more mature album to come".
Billboard ranked "Shout Out to My Ex" at number 58 on their "100 Best Pop Songs of 2016" list.
Chart performance
The song debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart, achieving 95,000 combined sales to give the band the fourth UK number one of their careers, following "Cannonball" in 2011, "Wings" in 2012 and "Black Magic" in 2015. "Shout Out to My Ex" was also the first UK number one single of 2016 with a female lead, as the three women with number one singles earlier in the year, Kyla, MØ and Halsey, were all featured artists. It stayed at number one the following week, making it Little Mix's second song (after "Black Magic") to spend multiple weeks at number 1. It was also certified silver by the BPI for selling over 200,000 copies in its second week. It spent a third week before being replaced by "Rockabye" by Clean Bandit.
It debuted at number 6 in Ireland and rose to the number one spot in its second week, making it Little Mix's third number one single there (following "Cannonball" and "Wings"). In the US, the song debuted at number 4 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart, a 25 track extension to the Hot 100, later debuting on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 69. It also reached number 30 on the Digital Songs chart, Little Mix's highest placing on that particular list to date. In Canada, it debuted on the Canadian Hot 100 at number 37, becoming the group's first top 40 single there.
It also peaked at number 7 in New Zealand, making "Shout Out to My Ex" the group's highest peaking song in the country and their first top ten single.
It debuted at number 16 on the Australian ARIA Charts, then rose 12 places to number 4 the following week. This makes it Little Mix's second top 5 single in Australia (following "Wings", which peaked at number 3). It is also the group's highest peak for a song in many European countries. It charted in the top 40 in Flanders, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Norway and Denmark.
Music video
The video is set in the Tabernas Desert in Almería, Spain, and was released at 12:00 BST on 21 October 2016 on Vevo. The band hang out in a trailer, take a drive along a highway lined with lavender-coloured trees and pose by a pool.
Live performances
The song was unveiled with its X Factor performance, in which the girls started in a car outside the X Factor studios, flanked by female cheerleaders in T-shirts with the names of male and female exes on them, which the cheerleaders removed towards the end of the song. The girls promoted the song in a non-singing appearance on The One Show, minus Jade, and also promoted it on Good Morning Britain, on Belgian TV show Jonas Van Geel, at the BBC Teen Awards, on the Norwegian program Senkveld, in a non-singing appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show and also performed it on The X Factor Australia, after the contestants performed "Wings". It was also performed on Italian X Factor on 24 November, where the performance was similar to that of the U.K. Series but background lighting, and the leotards the cheerleaders had under their tops, bore colors of the Italian flag. A similar performance was done at the LOS40 Music Awards 2016 in Barcelona, where a yellow colour scheme was used for LM, the dancers and the backing lights. At the start of the grand Final of The X Factor, 9 of the grand finalists sang Shoutout in a group performance.