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 the Truth Feels Like song she wrote with J.R. Rotem, Justin Tranter and Julia Michaels. She described it as a "work of art" for "express[ing] so clearly what [she] was [going through] at the time". They also worked on other songs, such as "Naughty", "Misery", which she considered a "really happy song," and "Make Me Like You", produced by Mattman & Robin, which, having been surprised by the result, she called "so good"! "This Is What the Truth Feels Like" focuses on several themes, including "moving on from a broken relationship" to "falling in love again". Her divorce from Gavin Rossdale served as the