Composition
"7 Things" is a pop rock song with a length of three minutes and 33 seconds. According to Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine, the song's verses are tinged with country while it's refrains bear pop punk aspects. The song is set in common time and has moderate rock tempo of 108 beats per minute. It is written in the key of E major while Cyrus' vocals span one octave, ranging from G#3 to G#4. Fraser McAlpine of the BBC called the song a "a three-tempo patchwork quilt". In the song's introduction, the band begins to strum acoustic guitars at a moderate tempo while Cyrus chants "sha". The tempo continues as Cyrus begins the first verse in the song's fourth bar. At each chorus, "7 Things" speeds up dramatically and Cyrus' vocals become aggressive and forceful; Chris Willman of Entertainment Weekly described the transition as "from sensitive breakup song in the strummy verses to punky-pop kiss-off in the double-time choruses." McAlpine noted the stress Cyrus places on vowels in the song: "'yerw' instead of 'you', 'erw' instead of 'oh', and so on...".
The song's lyrics are written in second person, a message from the singer to her ex-boyfriend detailing the hurt he caused her while they were dating. The refrain is a list of the seven traits the singer "hates" most about her ex, with the seventh item being her frustration that despite his flaws, he makes her love him. Ben Ratliff of The New York Times noted that the list actually "runs to 8 to 11 things, depending on how you parse it". Henry Freedland of Paste magazine compared it to a similar list featured as a poem in the 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You. In one verse, Cyrus asks for a sincere apology and states, "If you text it, I'll delete it", which Molly Lambert of The New York Times said "perfectly captur our confusing age of technologically mediated courtship." The song concludes with a variation of the refrain, in which Cyrus names the seven things she likes the most about her ex, again concluding with "you make me love you".
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