[3][4][5][6][7][8] The song features additional vocals by Carly Holt, who is married to the 1975's lead guitarist Adam Hann, and string arrangements from musician and composer Warren Ellis of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
[9] Musically, "About You" is a pop rock ballad featuring shoegaze-inspired production; Healy cited U2, Phil Spector and David Cronenberg as influences for the track.
[10] He credited musician and composer Warren Ellis - who contributed string arrangements to the album - with having a significant influence on the track's creative direction.
He noted that the initial version of the track was "really simple" and "stylistically a little bit cleaner" than "Robbers", before Ellis "made it all weird and shoegazey".
The song's shoegaze-inspired production is characterized by "swooping strings, fuzzed-out guitars, and drowsy saxophones", which Maura Johnston of Rolling Stone felt "[shroud]" Healy's voice in the "chaos" of the instrumentation.