"Too Little Too Late" was one of the first prospective songs from the album that Herbert played for JoJo. The singer claims she wanted to record the song as soon as she heard it for the first time, elaborating, "When my team heard that song, they knew I could hit the sweet spot, musically and in terms of subject matter." According to "Vibe", the overall more mature, personal sentiment of the album prompted her to record "Too Little Too Late", having experienced both her first love and first heartbreak since the release of her self-titled debut album. The song was recorded at both Cryptic Studios in Los Angeles, California and Sony Music Studios in New York, New York. The songwriters got along both with JoJo and her mother Diana Levesque, who is also her manager, so well that they later returned to the studio to co-write a second song for the album with JoJo herself, entitled "How to Touch a Girl". In regards his musical style, JoJo described Steinberg as "more of a classic writer and producer." Having previously written several successful singles throughout the 1980s and 1990s for artists such as Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, The Bangles, Whitney Houston and Heart, Steinberg, aged 56 at the time, realized he is older than JoJo (15) and Alexander (24) combined while working in the recording studio with the two younger artists but didn't find it difficult to write lyrics appropriate for them, explaining, "I think that the part of me that writes lyrics isn’t really old or young ... I think the lyrics flow out in a way that has an honesty to it." On the difference between writing for younger versus older artists, Steinberg explained "you don't really know it's for somebody younger ... I've almost never really sat down and said, 'I'm going to try to write one that would be good for somebody younger.' I just write a song, and then if somebody younger likes it, then they sing it."