"I'd like to be the owner of the zipper on your jeans," she sings on the racy "Hey You," which was compared to the works of American rock-band No Doubt, by Slant Magazine. Mariachi horns bump up against surf guitars in "Animal City", a don't-go-there warning against fame and fake friends; while bossa nova accents wind through "Something", one of only two tracks reprised from "Fijación Oral", being called "En Tus Pupilas" on the first edition. While "The Day and the Time" is on the first edition, with the title "Dia Especial". Meanwhile, gypsy-caravan violin and marauder guitar complete "Your Embrace," a teardroppy, adult-contemporary balladry, whilst "Costume Makes the Clown," talks about her cheating on her guy, over battering-ram guitars. Shakira also dives into pulsating neo-disco on the closing track "Timor", but in the form of a protest song. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, "Oral Fixation" received an average score of 74 based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of "Allmusic" gave the album a rating of 4 stars (out of 5), calling it "a deadly serious, ambitious pop/rock album, most assuredly not frivolous dance-pop, [...] it's pop, but it's unconventional". Erlewine also wrote that "Oral Fixation", "is not only a markedly different album from "Fijación Oral", but from every other record in her catalog -- or, most importantly, from any other pop album in 2005." Matt Cibula of "PopMatters" agreed, writing that "Oral Fixation" is "the best pop record of the year". Alexis Petridis of "The Guardian" wrote that "Oral Fixation is the sound of an utterly unique voice in a uniform world." Agustin Gurza of "Los Angeles Times" wrote the album "is a stronger work as a whole, with sharper edges and darker undertones," praising its music, writing that "this work stands on its own, squarely within the mainstream of U.S. pop and rock with a lot less Latin flavor." David Browne of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the album a "B-" rating, writing that, "Although "Oral Fixation" is hardly the first time a Latina act has aimed straight for the middle of the North American road and nearly lost control of the wheel in the process, it's among the most disappointing.