When Get Away From Me was released on February 10, 2004, Rolling Stone gave the album ★★★★. McKay made her national TV debut on The Late Show with David Letterman, and the record landed in the Billboard Top 200. She was compared to both “Doris Day and Eminem,” said NPR Morning Edition. “And throw in a bit of Billie Holiday for good measure.” “It was a different time,” says Nellie.

“Nellie McKay—and her debut album—were not perfect." notes Audiophix. "They were better than that. They were real. And in a year that saw seminal punk from Green Day (American Idiot) and seminal hip hop from Kanye (College Dropout), which came out the same day as Get Away From Me, that was enough to make it the best album of the year.” Salon agrees: "“One of the great pop albums of the early 21st century.”

Popmatters ponders further, comparing the original with GEE WHIZ: “Two decades later, the circumstances and names differ, but the anguish remains the same, as politicians, dictators, and other killers make life hell for ordinary citizens. ...Emerick’s production of Get Away From Me frames the material in ways that suggest McKay is all surface.... [he] confused the sincerity of her performance with what she is artistically presenting.

“'What does it matter if I change the world at all?” McKay asks, ...Can music actually cause social/political change? She wants to know. Laughing at her suggests the answer is 'no', but just by asking the question, she presumes it could be 'yes'. While some of the songs’ references may seem passé (President George W. Bush, war in Bosnia, starvation in Bosnia), the topics still resonate today.

"Besides world peace, McKay addresses everything from foreign affairs to male/female relationships to the joy of pets with a serious, if playful, eye. Her more stripped-down production on the demos makes her musings personal and gives them weight. As demos, they’re more coarse than Emerick’s finished project, which makes her concerns more direct and authentic.

"GEE WHIZ reveals Nellie McKay’s instrumental talents, vocal charms, and intellectual capabilities without added sweetening. The music is bright enough on its own. Songs such as “Respectable”, “Toto Dies”, and “Ding Dong” would be more insidious without Emerick’s production talents. The release of these original demos, like the Beatles’ anthology albums and other demo records released after the success of finished projects, shows the hard work that went into the creation of what seemed to be magical masterpieces."