 Elysa Gardner from USA Today advised people who buy the album to skip the song. In his negative review for the album, Matthew Cole of Slant Magazine found it difficult to think of a song more unrefined or more irritating than "Peacock". He believed all reviews of Teenage Dream will discuss the track, which will be because it is "potentially historic in its badness, to the point that, once you 've heard it, you too will have to describe it to other people just to convince yourself that it really exists." Spin magazine writer Mikael Wood remarked that the song contains a double entendre that even a performer such as Kesha could find crude.
