7 Things - Background

Background

"7 Things" is also under the legal title of "Seven Things I Hate About You", as registered by Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI). Like most of the songs on Breakout, Cyrus conceived "7 Things" while traveling on the Best of Both Worlds Tour from October 2007 to January 2008.

"I was locked up in the bus the entire time. And it was, like, such a great time for me to have a minute for myself, which I never get. So it was awesome to get to do that and just kinda go through all the different stages of what's been going on the last couple of years. And I just thought it'd be fun to just kinda. I didn't even mean for it to be for, you know, the record or for anything. It was just like 'just start writing this'. I got into it and I played some of it for my sister and she was like, 'dude, that's awesome'. And it was just so much fun to have, like, a good, little therapy moment for me, just to be able to go through everything. It was awesome. It was so much fun to write."

Cyrus says "7 Things" was inspired by an ex-boyfriend. In an interview with Ryan Seacrest, Cyrus said that she was "going through nine-hundred different emotions while trying to write song" and that her use of the word "hate" demonstrated how furious she was. When Seacrest asked if she was worried the song's subject would hear it and be upset, Cyrus responded that while she was slightly worried, "I want him to be upset. That was my point." She showed her draft to co-songwriters and producers Tim James and Antonia Armato, who suggested adding it to Breakout. Originally, "7 Things" was more "soft and nice" but Cyrus says she "went nuts" during the recording process and gave the song a harder sound. Cyrus had initially chosen "Fly on the Wall" as the lead single from Breakout, but replaced it with "7 Things" because she felt it was a "better introduction" to the album.