Schruers describes the song's melody as alternating between "surging" and "relenting." The original studio version has minimal instrumentation. The most prominent instruments are Joel's piano and some cymbal crashes. Schruers describes Joel's piano playing as "stately." On the 1983 reissue of "Cold Spring Harbor", "She's Got a Way" also incorporated strings, which may have been inspired by a live performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City at which strings were included in the instrumentation. Schruers attributes some of the effect of the song to the way Joel sings the final word of the final phrase "I don't know what it is/But there doesn't have to be a reason anyway." Schruers describes the last word "anyway" as hanging in the air, "trailing off" and "disrupting the tempo" and thus "seemingly giving in to the emotion" of love.