This Is What the Truth Feels Like lyrics such as: "They're all gonna say I'm rebounding, so rebound all over me". "This Is What the Truth Feels Like" features a range of genres; including pop, reggae, disco and dancehall, R&B, hip hop and "punky" electro-pop music. Leah Greenblatt of "Entertainment Weekly" viewed it as "an album so directly torn from Stefani's recent, much-documented romantic upheavals that it could be called 'The Ballad of Blake and Gavin". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic added that: "Stefani spends roughly half of the record singing breezy songs of liberation." Sal Cinquemani of "Slant Magazine" commented: "While an artist converting personal tragedy
This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get were not re-recorded for "This Is What You Want...This Is What You Get" (although a remixed version of "Blue Water" was included as the B-side on the "This Is Not a Love Song" 12" single). Songs on "This Is What You Want...This Is What You Get" which did not appear in any form on "Commercial Zone" are "Tie Me to the Length of That", "The Pardon" and "1981", and are the only songs on the album which do not credit Keith Levene as a co-writer. PiL was supposed to score the soundtrack for the 1983 suspense film "Copkiller", starring Harvey