Songfacts®:

• Cher Lloyd is an English singer who is of Roman ancestry through her mother. She unsuccessfully auditioned for The X Factor twice (when the minimum age was lower) singing ballads but it was only after reinventing herself that she got through to see the judges stages. Cher got through to the final, where she performed a mash-up of "The Clapping Song" and "Get Ur Freak On", followed by a duet with will.i.am, which was a mashup of "Where Is The Love?" and "I Gotta Feeling." Lloyd was then eliminated in fourth place, having received the fewest public votes. After the final, it was announced that Syco Music had signed her up.
• This is her debut single, which is not a Rolling Stone reference, but a term used for people who put you down. It was produced by Beyoncé and M.I.A. collaborator Diplo.
• The song has faced criticism on Twitter, with some users comparing it to the children's tune "Little Donkey" and popular US folk ballad, "Oh My Darling, Clementine."
• The song was written by New York songwriter Autumn Rowe who also co-penned Leona Lewis' "Collide." She told Digital Spy how the haters Cher encountered on X-Factor inspired her: "Cher Lloyd is not who people think she is. I was her first session after the show - after Will.i.am - but I was the first writer she worked with. We wrote 'Swagger Jagger' that same day. I sat her down and said, 'I don't know if you've done this before, but I want you to feel comfortable, I want you tell me what you're going through'. And she told me. People would buy tickets to the show, just to boo her. I said, 'This is insane'. In America, if people want to get at you, what you do instead of hiding is you address it head on - like Eminem did in 8 Mile."
• The Sticks + Stones album title refers to the fact that Lloyd doesn't care how others react to her. She explained to Digital Spy: "A lot of things have been said about me. People are going to talk and that's a good thing; I want people to talk. I don't want people to say, 'So, what do you think about that Cher?' and for them to reply, 'She's okay'. Okay is not good enough. I want them to either love me or to completely despise me - I mean call me all the names under the sun. I love it. It makes me better and for that reason I called the album Sticks + Stones. It's just a little saying my mum used to say."
• The song featured in a Real California Milk advert in America, in which it is sung by a cow from the upstairs bathroom, whilst the humans downstairs are eating breakfast.