A mid-tempo R&B track, "One of Those Days" samples The Isley Brothers' song "Between the Sheets" (1983), and its lyrics speak about getting away from the stress of daily life.

It peaked at number six in Hungary, and also made the singles charts at in Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.

Houston performed "One of Those Days" live on a concert organized at Lincoln Center Plaza, in December 2002.

One day, while Reynolds was at Shek'speare's studio, The Music House, Houston and her husband Bobby Brown visited them.

"[15] She then sings about getting away from it,[16][17] by indulging in activities like a manicure, pedicure[18] and by having a "late-night snack, a bubble bathe and a massage".

[20] Writing for Entertainment Tonight, Tim Jaramillo commented that the song is a "smoky track with a feel-good, chilled-out vibe".

[15] An official remix of the song features rapped verses from Nelly, which according to MTV News staffs has a reggae feel.

Although he deemed it an "underrated single" at first[26] and wrote that it "leaps beyond its work-sucks-the-rent's-late-I-need-a-date griping into the realm of existential letting",[26] he later commented that the song is "grounded in retort".

[26] Chuck Taylor of Billboard remarked that the song marks a "triumphant return of one of the great singers, who delivers the goods in glorious voice.

[14] Writing for The Boston Globe, Joan Anderman called it a "breezy" track with a "disturbingly trite" theme.

[27] Jimmy Draper of San Francisco Bay Guardian noted that "the song seems so anticlimactic in comparison to the real-life pot".

[29] Entertainment Weekly gave the remix single a D rating and commented negatively that "this chaotic mess isn't likely to find an enthusiastic audience" as the producer "laid a random Nelly verse and some whistle beats on top of Houston's vocals.

They further commented that "Whitney gave women of the world an instruction manual for pampering themselves in the Sex and the City era".

[38] In the Netherlands, the song entered the Mega Single Top 100 chart at number 87, the week dated January 4, 2003.

[47] Donning a "jeans, a cream-colored turtleneck, full-length shearling coat and sunglasses", Houston performed the song as the opening number of the concert to a crowd of about 4,000 people.