The song has a metal sound and started playing on Canadian rock radio in March 2004, at around the same time that the album's lead single, "Don't Tell Me", was being promoted.

[citation needed] Annabel Leathes of BBC Music compared the song to another ballad from Under My Skin, "My Happy Ending", since they both "pivot on the pain and despair of relationships going off the boil and, despite the stadium-rousing choruses.

Annabel Leathes from BBC Music wrote that the song "pivot[s] on the pain and despair of relationships going off the boil and, despite the stadium-rousing choruses[, ...] Lavigne's whiney vocals and trite lyrics imply that madam is merely having a strop rather than wearing the hair shirt of Alanis Morissette-style suffering.

"[12] Lance Fiasco from idobi Radio shared that "Take Me Away" and Lavigne's previous single, "Losing Grip", are the harder-edged hair-messers that really showed her grrl badge, demonstrating the once-poisonous sting of Alanis.

[13] Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine labelled "Take Me Away" a "head-banging" opening track from the album which conjured '80s metal with heaps of guitars and vocal overdubs.

[15] Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine noted that Lavigne's sound was now much heavier and darker and compared her to Amy Lee, the co-founder and lead vocalist of Evanescence.