The soundtrack for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was a much expected release and Madonna's song was chosen by the album's executive producers to promote it.

Musically, "Beautiful Stranger" is a psychedelic pop and disco song that features heavily reverberated guitars and bouncy drum loops.

It was a commercial success reaching the top of the charts in Canada, Finland, Iceland and Italy, number two in the United Kingdom and top-ten in many markets.

The song's music video, directed by Brett Ratner, prominently features Madonna singing in a club, visited by Mike Myers as his character Austin Powers.

Madonna performed the song on her 2001 Drowned World Tour, and it has been covered by some artists, including a critically acclaimed version by Australian rock band DMA's.

By May 1999, expectations were already high for the release, so the producers decided to include Madonna's track along with a song from a number of other high-profile artists like R.E.M., Lenny Kravitz and Mel B from the Spice Girls.

[4] As recalled by Oseary, there was intense competition among artists to have their songs placed in the soundtrack, with one manager connected to the project describing the fight for the first potential single release as "a blood bath".

[14] According to the sheet music published by Musicnotes.com, "Beautiful Stranger" is set in common time and is composed in a key of F♯ major with a mid dance tempo of 128 beats per minute.

[15] "Beautiful Stranger" is a psychedelic pop[16] and disco[17] song and begins with a musical instrumentation reminiscent of "Light My Fire" (1967) by The Doors and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (1967) by The Beatles.

[19] USA Today's Ken Barnes has suggested that the chorus, riff, instrumentation and structure of "Beautiful Stranger" were based on American rock band Love's 1966 single "She Comes in Colors".

[20] According to Michael Paoletta from Billboard, "no fierce-ruling club DJ in 1999 would [have] dared play the original jangly rock-etched version of the song".

He also complimented the production saying that "this latest partnership with [Orbit] taps into a walloping romp of guitars and enough cascading organs to prompt an urge to listen to your Monkees collection."

Club, labeled it as "Madonna's best song that never appeared on one of her regular albums [...] a psychedelic pop confection that offered a few of her most indelible hooks".

Ihnat also wrote that "although less ethereal than 1998's Ray of Light, ['Beautiful Stranger'] is just as dance-floor ready [...] dance flute has never sounded so enticing, and Madonna's voice so sweetly seductive".

[23] Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani gave the song a rating of B− and wrote: "Like any good throwaway track, 'Beautiful Stranger' doesn't pretend to be much more than it is.

Whiny guitars and flutes abound, Madonna and Orbit concocted a perfect theme song for friend Mike Myers's cooky Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

[26] In August 2018, Paul Schrodt from the same magazine, placed it at number 53 on his ranking of the singer's singles, calling it "the antithesis of Ray of Light.

The innocuous lyrics could’ve been ghostwritten for anyone, but the song endears due to Madge’s playful delivery and Orbit’s sonic details".

[27] Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly, declared it as the "song of the summer", and praised it for being "a piece of psychedelic pop at once so 60s and so 90s that to sully it with a 'shagalicious' joke would be an insult...

[33] While ranking Madonna's singles, in honor of her 60th birthday, The Guardian's Jude Rogers placed "Beautiful Stranger" at number 34, calling it a "gorgeously slinky, impish love song".

[34] In a list of the "99 Best Songs of 1999", Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield placed the track at number 27 and praised it for being "the most shagadelic disco hit by a megastar shimmying into the big 4-0", adding that "Madonna has never sounded so loose, so lithe, so funny".

[57] According to the Official Charts Company, the song has sold 535,000 copies in the United Kingdom as of August 2016 and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

[6] The video begins with Myers as Austin Powers, receiving a call from his boss Basil Exposition (Michael York), who warns him against a dangerous spy describing her as a "master of disguise".

[19][65] As the video continues, Powers finds Madonna at a club performing in front of a crowd, which includes Verne Troyer in character as Mini-Me.

[68] Matthew Rettenmund wrote in his Encyclopedia Madonnica that "Madonna probably gave very little thought [behind the video]" but he felt that it was better than being a "couple of steps above a clips compilation".

[77] The performance on August 26, 2001, at The Palace of Auburn Hills, outside of Madonna's hometown of Detroit was recorded and released in the live video album, Drowned World Tour 2001.

[80] On October 26, 2008, Madonna performed a snippet of "Beautiful Stranger" as the request song during the Chicago stop of her Sticky & Sweet Tour.

[82] In December 2016, Madonna performed "Beautiful Stranger" during her Tears of a Clown show as part of a benefit dinner for her charity, Raising Malawi, at Miami, Florida.

[87] Michael Carr from Music Feeds magazine also praised the cover saying "Lending itself surprisingly well to the boys’ shoegazey brit pop treatment, the lads absolutely nail it... To be honest though, they kind of won on song choice alone".

[88] Most recently, American punk band Skating Polly released a cover of the song on the 2020 re-release of their album, The Make It All Show, as one of the bonus tracks.